Technology

jeudi 3 août 2023

LG’s 27-inch OLED is ushering in a new age for monitors

The LG 27GR95QE-B is a tantalizing taste of what’s to come.

We’ve come so far. In a year or three, I wouldn’t be surprised if OLED supplants IPS, VA, and high-refresh-rate TN panels as the PC gamer’s screen of choice.

Because the 27-inch panel inside a wave of new monitors, including the LG 27GR95QE-B I’m reviewing today, is almost — nearly — not quite — the best of all worlds.

For years, buying a gaming monitor has meant huge tradeoffs. You couldn’t get amazing color, deep blacks, competitive refresh rates, high resolution, and excellent viewing angles all in a single screen. The rule of thumb was IPS for bright rooms, VA for dark ones, and TN only if you absolutely, positively needed the highest refresh rates — or a budget panel.

But OLED panels can theoretically do it all if you’ve got the cash. They’ve already taken over high-end phones because their true blacks and brilliant organic colors say “premium” like nothing else. I swear by my OLED TV. But as I saw when I tried turning a 48-inch LG OLED television into my desktop monitor for work and play, there’s been plenty holding them back. They need a monitor-like size, controls, and a way to address desktop PC burn-in fears without so much auto-dimming that I want to claw my eyes out.

The $999 LG 27GR95QE-B and friends are most of the way there. These screens are 100 nits of sustained brightness, a warranty update, and a decent sale away from winning me over for good.

The LG 27GR95QE-B, specifically, is a 26.5-inch, 2560 x 1440 OLED screen with a 240Hz refresh rate over DisplayPort 1.4 or either of its twin HDMI 2.1 ports. It supports Nvidia G-Sync, AMD FreeSync Premium, and generic 48–120Hz VRR at up to a downscaled 4K resolution for your PS5, Xbox, or streaming gadget. (I fired up The Touryst, one of the few native 4K 120Hz games for PS5, and it worked smoothly downscaled to 1440p.)

*LG’s “hexagon lighting” includes these vents and a single LED for underglow.*

*No USB-C here, but all three video inputs can do 240Hz with VRR.*

*Keep the remote handy: the monitor itself only has a single button for the entire OSD.*

The monitor has a simple USB hub with two 5Gbps USB-A ports; it raises, tilts, swivels, and pivots on its included click-in stand; and it comes with a miniature TV remote to switch inputs, brightness, and adjust volume for its 3.5mm headphone jack. There’s no USB-C port for single-cable docking, I’m afraid — laptop users will need to charge them elsewhere.

The LG 27GR95QE-B is most definitely not the only monitor with this screen inside. In fact, I keep hearing this Asus PG27AQDM, with the same exact LG OLED panel, has a slight edge in brightness and creature comforts (like a built-in joystick to control the OSD). But after replacing my regular 27-inch 1440p IPS screen with LG’s 27-inch 1440p OLED for three whole months, I feel like I need to share with you how few compromises are left.

Until April of this year, my daily driver desktop monitor was a 27-inch Asus TUF VG27AQ. I picked it because Rtings rated it one of the very best all-around monitors at the time — save for crummy HDR and the “IPS glow” that makes blacks look gray in a dark room. It’s long been flanked by two ancient Dell U2412M monitors I stand vertically so I can keep an eye on Slack and Discord and Facebook Messenger and... well, whatever’s replacing Twitter next.

Before, adding OLED meant dismantling that entire setup to fit at least a giant 34-inch monitor on my desk, if not a 42- or 48-inch TV. But with this LG, it’s finally a direct replacement: 27-inch monitor out, 27-inch monitor in. I just had to shove my Synology NAS and mousepad a bit further away to fit LG’s large V-shaped stand.

The first test: would I notice a deal-breaking difference? Could I truly drop this monitor into my Verge-editing, game-blasting battlestation without missing a beat — and without babying the screen to avoid burn-in? I decided I’d never turn off the monitor manually, or hide my taskbar, or any of the things you’re theoretically supposed to do to protect an OLED screen. I would rely entirely on the monitor’s built-in protections and see what would happen.

There was one hitch. A few hours into my very first workday, LG’s auto-brightness-limiting anti-burn-in techniques were already driving me up the wall. I’ll point you to this good TFTCentral explainer if you want to read about ABL, ASBL, and TPC because I’m pleased to say they aren’t as relevant to this review as I feared. The short version is that the more of the screen that’s covered in bright white objects, the more the screen dims — an utter travesty for desktop work because most websites and applications are white even if you enable dark mode in your OS.

*A little video from Asus that illustrates one form of auto-dimming.*

But after I installed a firmware update (via LG’s OnScreen Control app), that irritation disappeared. For the past three months, I’ve been working on an OLED screen that never abruptly, infuriatingly dims!

I understand that isn’t the case for every monitor that uses LG’s 27-inch OLED panel. With the Asus PG27AQDM, it’s actually optional: you have to turn on a setting called Uniform Brightness in a settings menu. But with the firmware update, LG made Uniform Brightness the default on the LG 27GR95QE-B, and it’s the key to making OLED the one screen to rule them all.

Here’s the thing: Uniform Brightness means, by definition, that LG is turning down the brightness of the entire screen to a set level... and you may have heard correctly that these LG panels are relatively dim! I’ll lean on reviewers with professional equipment to tell you we’re talking around 200 nits of brightness, a far cry from the 1,000-nit peak you might have seen advertised. (More on that peak in a sec.)

*The bundled remote. The DTS button is for the monitor’s headphone jack, though the screen also has an optical audio output for your HDMI video sources.*

During work hours, this actually didn’t bug me much! I never run my desktop monitors at anything close to their peak — my old IPS screen is set closer to 100 nits as I write these words late into the evening, and I’ll boost the screen to around 200 during the day. But when my wife occasionally opens up the curtains, it’s true that the LG OLED doesn’t have any extra oomph to power through the sheen on its anti-glare screen. And when it’s time to game or watch Netflix, I would often find myself stabbing the bundled remote’s “raise brightness” key only to find out it was already maxed.

There is one other potential wrinkle for desktop work: LG’s WOLED subpixel arrangement, which doesn’t perfectly line up its red, green, blue, and extra white subpixels, can lead to slightly less crisp, occasionally color-fringed icons and text compared to traditional RGB stripe panels. But that was never a problem for me. It wasn’t until I switched back to my IPS screen three months later that I noticed documents were slightly crisper. And frankly, a 27-inch 1440p monitor less than two feet from my face is no Retina display — neither OLED nor IPS can keep me from seeing rough pixel edges at that pixel density (110ppi) and distance, so it feels like a minor tradeoff.

*Color-fringed icons. I had to get really close to truly notice them.*

But the OLED was clearly superior in almost every game I played. And when I say “clearly,” I literally mean the clarity. It feels slightly more like looking through a window into another world and slightly less like looking at a screen.

As you probably know, OLED screens have incredible contrast because of their true black levels. Their pixels generate light and can turn off that light entirely; there’s no backlight here, which means less haze in dark scenes. They’re also incredibly responsive, leading to glassy, clear motion that’s beyond all but the fastest LCD screens. (I used Blur Busters’ popular UFO test to check, but any well-engineered game with a high enough frame rate works.) That was true even of the 120Hz OLED TV I tried to use as a monitor; this one runs at 240Hz, and it’s such a smooth experience.

What can amp up that clarity even further is HDR, which I’ve often described as removing a haze from whatever you’re looking at, letting dark be dark and light be light instead of compressing all the colors in between. HDR is also where you can actually access the panel’s nearly 1,000-nit peak. But HDR still has issues on Windows — and some additional ones on this monitor, I’m sorry to say.

Gears 5. *It’s impossible to show you HDR with an SDR camera and screen, but you can imagine.*

With the right game, it’s phenomenal. Gears 5 begins with chrome-covered soldiers rappelling down from a helicopter through a rainbow and past a sunlit waterfall to explore dark caves by the light of a drone with glowing blue repulsors for levitation. Every part of that looks amazing because the majority of the scene is dark, with only those lights I just described — the glint of armor, ripples of sunlight in the moving water, flying sparks from a chainsaw — bursting through the scene.

On my old IPS monitor, those lights simply don’t look real; I can barely see in the dark caves because my old screen makes them muddy gray.

Ori. *He just... bursts with light. It’s widely considered one of the best HDR games.*

Ori and the Will of the Wisps similarly sees light and dark collide, only here, Ori himself is a being of light whose every action is a flash of blue. But I started to notice that every time Ori’s powers flared, everything else on the screen got slightly darker. And when I started playing HDR games that were mostly already bright like Forza Horizon 5 or The Touryst or Genshin Impact on PS5, it was clear that LG’s 27-inch OLED panel didn’t have nearly enough sustained full-screen brightness to make, say, an island paradise feel properly lit. Firing off a Genshin Impact ultimate attack immediately dimmed the entire screen in a way I’ve never seen on my 65-inch LG OLED television.

(I even had a weird experience in Halo Infinite where throwing a grenade too close to my feet black-screened the entire monitor until I unplugged it and plugged it back in, but I couldn’t reproduce it more than twice, and it might have nothing to do with the monitor or HDR. Perhaps a video driver glitch? I’m only sharing it here in case you have the same experience — I’ve never, ever seen this happen with a monitor before.)

*I took a macro shot of Ori for the hell of it.*

Still, on balance, I’d rather play games on this monitor than even my LG OLED television. It’s just so immersive to have such a clear image so close to my face.

Movies and TV shows are a slightly different story, but that’s not really LG’s fault. Almost every streaming service is still arbitrarily nerfed on Windows. I couldn’t even get my Vudu copy of Blade Runner 2049 to play in HDR, much less 4K, and Netflix was stuck at 1080p HDR during my Windows tests regardless of which browser (or app) I used. Same with Amazon Prime Video. Same with Disney Plus. And 1080p on a 1440p monitor is, well, not the best streaming quality. YouTube works great at 1440p HDR, 4K HDR, and even 8K HDR on this monitor (slightly aliased due to downscaling), so there’s no particularly good reason why the paid subscriptions can’t (it’s because of DRM).

*4K HDR YouTube is your best bet to see what this screen can truly do. (And there, I highly recommend* *Jacob and Katie Schwarz*.)

But thankfully, the LG 27GR95QE-B twin HDMI 2.1 ports meant I could easily plug in my Chromecast or PS5 and stream 4K HDR video from there. The Witcher’s latest candlelit season looks mighty fine on this monitor in downscaled 4K, even if it’s a slightly better experience in native 4K on my living room OLED.

It’d be nice if I didn’t have to switch devices and modes so often with this monitor, though. I wound up adding a Windows HDR toggle button to my Stream Deck because I never want to deal with the HDR mode’s auto-dimming when I’m using the desktop. I’d probably want to rig up an Nvidia G-Sync toggle, too; I’ve played a few games, like Diablo IV, where the monitor keeps flickering in its variable refresh mode. (LG’s monitor menu actually warns about the flicker, and you can toggle off VRR there, too.)

But these are nitpicks. My only real hesitations are brightness, price, and that LG doesn’t stand behind this screen when it comes to burn-in. Bear with me, because this is going to get a little weird.

Theoretically, we’re at a turning point for OLED desktop monitors. These 27-inch panels will maintain a fixed brightness, if a little low, indefinitely. LG must have figured out they won’t burn-in at that 200-nit mark, right?

But the company wouldn’t confirm that to me. And though LG third-party spokesperson Jordan Guthmann originally told me that the standard two-year warranty does cover image retention “except in very certain use cases,” the actual warranty document that shipped alongside this monitor disagrees. There, LG specifically wrote that “burned-in images resulting from improper usage as described in the user manual” aren’t covered under warranty.

Speaking of improper and proper usage, the user manual doesn’t actually contain those phrases — but it does point out that static desktop icons, fixed windows, menus, and web browser bars are things that could put your monitor at risk of image retention. It sure sounds like normal desktop use is not recommended!

When I brought that up with Guthmann, he told me that LG was in the process of updating its warranty — and that a new version will specifically call out normal desktop features like static images and fixed menus as “not being a misuse case.” Similarly, although the user manual recommends turning Screen Move on, Guthmann says it’s okay that it’s off by default. “The warranty still applies even if it isn’t turned on.”

That new warranty language was supposed to be final in a few days. But 48 days later, the only change LG has made is removing that line about “burned-in images” from the warranty. Today, it’s not clear whether burn-in is covered at all.

Frankly, a two-year burn-in warranty might be the bare minimum. My 65-inch OLED TV didn’t start showing signs of it for closer to four years. After 5,700 hours of use, I mostly only notice it in animated movies and games with lots of color gradients.

Desktop work monitors, meanwhile, can easily be on for many more hours in a row than your average TV. So far, I’ve only put in about 700 hours on the LG 27GR95QE-B, and I haven’t yet found a test image that shows any burn-in at all.

If LG wants my money for a desktop OLED monitor, here’s what I’d like to see: first, 100 extra nits of sustained brightness across the entire screen, something Samsung has mostly managed with the QD-OLED panel you’ll find in the 34-inch ultrawide Alienware AW3423DWF. Second and more importantly, a warranty that actually sets my mind at ease. When those things arrive in a future wave of OLED, I’ll be lining up to put my money down.

Photography by Sean Hollister / The Verge

Zelda and Mario boost Nintendo to record profit

Mario and Luigi in their plumbers van. — *A profitable pair of plumbers.* | Image: Illumination

Nintendo just had a bumper quarter thanks to the release of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, as well as the Super Mario Bros. Movie. “Both sales and profits were notably large for a first quarter” the company noted in today’s earnings release, which covers the three months through June 30th.

Net sales stood at ¥461.3 billion (around $3.2 billion), a 50 percent increase versus last year, while operating profit rose 82.4 percent to ¥185.4 billion (around $1.3 billion). Bloomberg notes that it’s the highest first-quarter profit recorded by the company, beating its previous 2020 high set in the the first year of the pandemic just after the release of Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

The benefits of the release of Zelda and the Mario movie were felt directly and indirectly. Tears of the Kingdom sold 18.51 million units during Nintendo’s first quarter and is now the ninth best-selling Nintendo game for the console. Meanwhile, the Mario movie helped increase Nintendo’s “mobile and IP related income” by 190.1 percent versus last year. The Super Mario Bros. Movie has been a huge success, taking over $1 billion at the box office worldwide. Nintendo’s earnings release adds that the movie helped promote sales of its existing Mario games.

While sales of Switch consoles were still up compared to the same quarter last year (3.91 million units versus 3.43 million units), the consensus is that this hardware is nearing the end of its life, and Nintendo’s release calendar for the rest of the year is looking significantly leaner. The big question is when Nintendo might announce a Switch successor. Earlier this week VGC reported that a new console is planned for the second half of 2024, and that some of Nintendo’s software partners have already received development hardware for the forthcoming device.

So What Do We Call Twitter Now Anyway?

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mercredi 2 août 2023

Alienware’s new Aurora R16 desktop sheds gobs of plastic for a 40 percent smaller build

Alienware has clearly heard the feedback. Its prebuilt Aurora desktop PC needs work, particularly in the cooling department. So the new Alienware Aurora R16 is laser-focused on fixing that — to the point the company is largely ditching its trademark out-of-this-world look.

The new Aurora R16 has largely the same basic steel chassis inside, with the same 25.2 liters of space for your components. But its boxy new design ditches multiple pounds of plastic to make the entire computer 40 percent smaller in volume — shrinking all the way down from 60.7 liters to 36 liters in total.

*Alienware R15 vs. Alienware R16. They have the same internal volume.*

The goal of not being “impeded by plastics” was specifically for increased airflow, Alienware told journalists.

An infographic showing the Alienware Aurora’s specs. — *The new R16’s layout. Blue tabs mean toolless removal.*

The result is “up to” 10 percent lower CPU and 6 percent lower GPU temperatures, and a 20 percent quieter system on average. It’s the quietest Aurora that the company has ever built, says long-time Alienware vet Eddy Goyanes.

A person playing a game with the Aurora R16 next to their monitor on the desk, picture taken from the side. — *Suit of armor not included.*

The PC now pulls its air in through the “Stadium Loop”: large looped vents on both sides of the front of the rig, with a single 120mm intake fan behind them. The window-side of the loop is covered in 44 distinct LEDs for lighting, one of three RGB LED zones in the computer. (The 120mm rear exhuast fan and the alienhead logo in the front also have RGB LEDs inside; there’s also an optional 240mm liquid cooling radiator with twin 120mm fans up top. The other side of the PC has no lighting.)

The side of the chassis is also covered in hexagonal vents, the front of which it expects to intake air, while the rear ones exhaust it too — likely depending on your GPU.

*An image illustrating the Aurora R16’s cooling with wavy lines showing where the air goes in and comes out.*

The new R16 comes standard with Intel AX210 Wi-Fi 6E, a 500W 80+ Platinum power supply and 12-phase voltage regulation, and two memory slots and two M.2 SSD slots for up to 64GB of DDR5-5600 RAM and up to 8TB of PCIe Gen 4 storage. (Aftermarket storage and memory prices are currently at historic lows, by the by.)

You can fit a 3.5mm spinning hard drive in there as well. There’s also an optional 1000W 80+ Platinum power supply depending on your CPU and GPU.

*Here’s what the default air cooling will look like.*

The 33.8 pound (maximum weight) chassis also has quite a few ports: just around front is a USB-C port running at 10Gbps, three 5Gbps USB-A ports and a 3.5mm headset jack, and the rear offers a 20Gbps USB-C port, a 10Gbps USB-C port, two 5Gbps USB-A ports, and a pair of USB 2.0 ports as well as 2.5Gbps ethernet and an array of audio out.

A three-quarter front shot of the Aurora R16. — *There’s no cover for the front ports — they’re merely recessed.*

A picture of the rear ports of the Aurora R16 — *Proprietary motherboard has lots of USB and audio ports. Also 2.5Gbps ethernet.*

It’s available today starting at $1,750 in the United States (or $2300 CAD in Canada) with an air-cooled Core i7 13700F and Nvidia RTX 4070 graphics. You won’t get much higher in the GPU department for a bit: Asia and Europe can start with a RTX 3050 or upgrade to a RTX 4080 if you like, but in the United States the only other GPU option is the RTX 4070 Ti until later in the year. A 13th Gen i9 13900F is also available, though, and the company says the R16 will become its most powerful desktop by the end of the year.

Also missing from this new model is proper upgradability: the power supply and Z690 motherboard are still proprietary. Alienware lead Matt McGowan tells me that’s down to focus and time: “It was more efficient for us to move forward with this architecture and iterate on that than it was for us to completely redesign the product.”

*Liquid cooling does not come standard, but those neat honeycomb vents do.*

McGowan told journalists the team iterated around the previous-gen Alienware R15 to focus on space savings, complexity, and airflow before it potentially considers upgradability for future models — but no promises there. “We’ve obviously talked about how much upgradability we want to have with this product given all the other advantages it provides,” he says.

The company’s also not commenting on whether it will offer an AMD version of the R16. “We’re looking at that for future roadmap but not commenting on that at this time.”

*A better look at the liquid cooling module.*

*One loop is RGB-lit, the other is not.*

Meta and the UFC are teaming up on a UFC-themed experience in Horizon Worlds

Image: Nick Barclay / The Verge

Meta and the UFC are working together to make a special UFC-themed experience in Meta’s Horizon Worlds social VR platform, according to a Meta blog post on Wednesday.

In the UFC zone, you’ll be able to watch 4K, 180-degree streams of fights, socialize with other players about UFC, see a virtual recreation of the Octagon, and compete in in-world games to get “exclusive unlockable rewards” and eventually become “a UFC Hall of Famer.” It’s set to launch sometime in November.

I’m not a UFC fan, so I don’t think I’ll be spending much time in the zone. But the dedicated UFC space in Horizon Worlds is just one of a growing number of tailored experiences from Meta to try and get people to hang out on the platform. (It’s reportedly struggled to keep users.) Last week, for example, Meta launched an in-Horizon first-person shooter called Super Rumble, and in a blog post discussing the game, the company said that it was “the first of many Worlds experiences to come that will showcase improvements like better graphics, deeper gameplay, and a variety of quests and rewards.”

Experiences like Super Rumble and this forthcoming UFC-themed zone could prove to be important as Meta expands Horizon Worlds from VR to other platforms. The company might finally be launching the mobile version of Horizon Worlds soon (maybe at its Connect event on September 27th?), and Meta has also said it’s working on a web version of the app.

Meta’s Wednesday blog post also included a schedule of upcoming UFC fights you can watch in VR on Quest headsets through the Xtadium app with a UFC Fight Pass subscription. I’m guessing Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who has competed in Jiu-Jitsu, might be tuning in — that is, if he’s not training in the octagon in his backyard.

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Twitter Blue subscribers can now hide their blue checks

Image: The Verge

Twitter Blue, which Elon Musk is currently rebranding to X Blue, now includes the option to hide the notorious blue checkmark. Twitter Blue subscribers recently started noticing the “hide your blue checkmark” option on the web and in mobile apps, offering the ability to hide that they’re paying for Twitter and avoid memes about how “this mf paid for twitter.”

“The checkmark will be hidden on your profile and posts,” notes a Twitter support article. “The checkmark may still appear in some places and some features could still reveal you have an active subscription. Some features may not be available while your checkmark is hidden.”

Twitter previously used a blue checkmark verification system for account recognition or credibility, but when Elon Musk started allowing anyone to be “verified” through a Blue subscription it briefly descended into chaos with fake accounts. Then everyone soon realized who was paying to be verified on Twitter before Twitter eventually removed blue checkmarks from legacy verified accounts and changed how verified checkmarks were displayed multiple times. Blue checkmarks are also assigned to users with one million or more followers.

If you subscribe to Twitter Blue the service will now add an optional blue checkmark to your profile with a “verified since” date attached. Legacy verified accounts include the date an account was originally verified on Twitter before the Blue subscription system.

Twitter owner Elon Musk is currently rebranding the service to X in a bid to create an “everything app” that will likely include some form of a payments system in the future. The little blue bird disappeared last week, replaced with an “interim” X logo that briefly appeared on top of Twitter’s San Francisco office building in the form of an extravagant flashing and strobing X sign. There are still plenty of places where X refers to Twitter, and even the X Blue subscription page mentions Twitter Blue plenty of times.

Tired of Dating Apps, Some Turn to Google Docs

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mardi 1 août 2023

Everything we know about Apple’s Vision Pro headset

Illustration depicting several Apple logos on a lime green background. — Illustration: Kristen Radtke / The Verge

Apple announced Vision Pro, its long-rumored virtual and augmented reality headset, at WWDC 2023. Here’s a timeline of all the details that have emerged about the device over the years and what we know so far.

People have been speculating about Apple’s entry into the world of virtual and augmented reality headsets for the better part of a decade, and at WWDC 2023, it finally revealed Vision Pro.

The new headset runs visionOS, uses two Apple Silicon chips (M2 Ultra and R1), and can be used for up to two hours with a tethered battery pack or for as long as you want if it’s plugged in. It also uses “natural control” with hand and eye tracking as well as voice commands. The Vision Pro headset will arrive “early next year” in the US, and Apple is pricing it at $3,499 to start.

Apple had never officially confirmed that it was working on the headset, but over the years, there were all kinds of rumors about what it might make. Now we know the truth about Vision Pro, a mixed reality device capable of both virtual and augmented reality experiences. Just like the rumors said, users can switch between AR and VR using a digital crown-style dial, and depending on what they’re viewing, it displays their eyes on the front so that others know the person wearing it can see them.

Read on for all our coverage so far on Apple’s Vision Pro headset.

The entire story of Twitter / X under Elon Musk

An image showing Elon Musk on a background with hammers — Image: Laura Normand / The Verge

Forget Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, and The Boring Company — Elon Musk is now the owner of Twitter.

Elon Musk bought Twitter, and now he’s rebranding it as X. Signs have gone up (and back down), icons are changing, and an old plan is new.

How’d we get here?

On April 4th, 2022, we learned that Musk had purchased enough shares of Twitter to become its largest individual shareholder. Eventually, he followed up with an unsolicited offer to buy 100 percent of Twitter’s shares for $54.20 each, or about $44 billion. Twitter accepted Musk’s offer, but then things got weird because he tried to cancel the deal.

There was a lot of back-and-forth about bots and text messages, but in the end, Musk settled on buying the company rather than facing a deposition or Chancery Court trial and eventually strode into Twitter HQ carrying a sink.

Since then, there have been layoffs, more layoffs, and even more layoffs — plus drama over Substack, unpaid bills, and blue checkmarks. With ad revenue still down from previous years, Elon finally abdicated the role of CEO in May 2023, installing longtime NBCUniversal ad executive Linda Yaccarino.

Read on for the latest updates about what’s going on inside Twitter right now.

Anker’s second 3D printer is the more affordable AnkerMake M5C

A 3D printer, with a silver gantry atop a silver and gray base, surrounded by 3D-printed objects. — *The AnkerMake M5C.* | Image: Anker

Anker didn’t exactly knock it out of the park with its first 3D printer, the AnkerMake M5, but today, it’s trying again. The new AnkerMake M5C, shipping today in the United States, ditches some of the original’s clumsier features in exchange for a $400 price tag. That’s half what the AnkerMake M5 cost when it arrived last year.

The M5C still offers the same 49-point automatic bed leveling system, removable flexible magnetic plate for easy adhesion and removal, and remarkably fast printing speeds up to 500mm per second (though no promises about quality at maximum speed). It still prints down to 0.1mm in resolution, has a hefty aluminum base and dual screws for the Z-axis, and now boasts a one-piece design for faster, simpler setup. Print volume is just slightly smaller at 220 x 220 x 250mm instead of 235 x 235 x 250.

Importantly, it now comes with an all-metal hotend, something the M5 lacked. (While Kickstarter backers were promised one for meeting stretch goals, Anker later claimed it was a misunderstanding.) All-metal hotends let the machine reach higher temperatures to melt tougher filaments and — done right — can help prevent certain kinds of jams.

So, what do you give up in exchange for the $400 price tag? Here are M5 features that the M5C lacks:

The “AI camera” that never really worked and didn’t make great timelapse videos, either, and raised questions about security
The filament runout sensor that never properly paused my prints during my review and added additional friction to filament loading
The dual-belt Y-axis bed carriage system that sometimes shipped with belt or V-wheel issues — it’s been radically changed now
Any kind of screen at all

That last is a weird omission! Printers half the price of the AnkerMake M5C still come with a screen, and they’re quite handy to monitor the status of your print and make calibration tweaks. Here, you’ll have to use Anker’s still-in-beta PC and Mac slicing software and Android and iOS apps instead.

“The intuitive AnkerMake app empowers users to monitor the status of prints, control the printer, and transfer sliced models directly from their smartphone or laptop,” reads a line from the company’s press release.

You do get one control on the printer itself, though: a single programmable button you can press, double-tap, or long-press to activate three functions of your choice. I’d rather have a screen, but I suppose I’d program mine to pause, play, and raise the gantry 100mm to more easily get at the bed — something I did often with the original AnkerMake M5 by repeatedly stabbing a touchscreen.

*The AnkerMake M5C’s single programmable button and USB port.*

The AnkerMake M5C still doesn’t have an SD card slot but does retain a port for a USB thumbdrive on the right side of the base — it’ll be nice to no longer have it atop the moving gantry.

I didn’t enjoy beta testing Anker’s first 3D printer, but I have to admit that it got a bit better, and it sounds like this new one may have fewer points of failure. But the real question is whether the company’s quality control has improved, something that (I keep hearing) also afflicts some buyers of lower-priced Creality machines.

Personally, I’ve moved on to a $700 Bambu P1P (currently on sale for $600 now that Bambu has introduced the enclosed P1S), and I’ve never had an easier time printing than now. And I’m looking forward to seeing if the $600 Creality K1, a very similar machine, is its equal or better.

The Fitbit app is getting a streamlined new look this fall

renders of the new Fitbit app redesign — *There’s a new three-tab structure and a more minimalist overall design.* | Image: Google

Fitbit’s been going through a lot of changes over the past year — and it looks like that’s only going to continue. The Google-owned app is getting a total redesign this fall, and select Fitbit users may see an invite to try a beta version starting today.

For starters, Fitbit is reorganizing how it presents your data. Going forward, the app will be divided into three tabs: Today, Coach, and You. The Today tab isn’t changing too drastically from what it is now, but the main metrics you see up top can be customized to highlight different focus areas. For example, if you want to sleep better, you’ll see your Sleep, steps, mindfulness, and Zone Minutes first thing. If your goal is to improve your heart health, the app will instead emphasize your heart, health metrics, Zone minutes, and exercise. You’ve always been able to customize what you see up top; now, Fitbit provides some custom presets for common goals. In its press release, Fitbit also says the new tab will feature “more consistent charts, graphics, and icons that show your health trends.”

Screenshot of the new Sleep details screen in the Fitbit app — *Everything’s been redesigned to better fit Google’s Material Design standards.*

The Coach tab is where content will live, like curated workouts or mindfulness sessions. Some of these will be available to free users, while others, like HIIT and dance cardio classes, will be exclusive to Fitbit Premium subscribers. The tab will also get filters that let you sort classes more easily (e.g., by time, required equipment, etc.)

The You tab is perhaps the most unfamiliar of the bunch. From a demo video, it appears that this is where you’ll be able to adjust personal settings, such as daily steps, bedtime, active zone minutes, etc. It’s also where you can view newly redesigned achievement badges. Fitbit says this is also where you can “manage community connections,” but it’s unclear what social features the redesigned app will have after Challenges were discontinued earlier this year.

It’s hard to see from official renders, but Fitbit says that it’ll be easier to log things like steps, exercise, and water intake — regardless of whether you have a Fitbit device. Otherwise, the look of the app has also been refreshed with a new color palette and updated photography, icons, and illustrations to match Google’s Material Design standards. From the official screenshots, it’s got a similar vibe to the Pixel Watch 2 watchfaces that leaked over the weekend. You could say the redesign finally makes it clear that Google owns Fitbit now.

None of this should come as surprising if you’ve been paying attention to the Android wearable space as of late. As mentioned, Fitbit ended its legacy Challenges and social features in March, angering several longtime users. Soon after, Google announced it would start the migration process from Fitbit to Google Accounts this summer. In May, Google announced Wear OS 4 at its annual I/O conference, and later this month, we’ll get to see how the new platform functions on the Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 series. Along the way, Google’s released a smattering of minor Wear OS and Fitbit updates.

It’s clear from this timeline that Google is laying the groundwork for the Pixel Watch 2, which is expected to launch later this fall alongside the Pixel 8. So far, we haven’t heard much about the second-gen smartwatch, though rumor has it Google will add a continuous electrodermal activity sensor and ditch Samsung’s processor for the new Qualcomm Snapdragon W5 Plus platform. When the Pixel Watch initially launched, there was understandable skepticism about whether Google would commit to its renewed wearables push. This, along with other efforts to further integrate Fitbit into the Google fold, seems to indicate that the Pixel Watch (and Fitbit) will be spared from Google’s graveyard. At least for now.

Sony’s take-anywhere XB100 speaker is on sale for less than $50

A photo of Sony’s compact SRS-XB100 Bluetooth speaker. — *Few speakers offer as much bang for your buck — let alone charm — as Sony’s colorful XB100.* | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

The world of portable speakers is vast and varied — a fact that is immediately apparent if you punch the words “Bluetooth speaker” into Google or Amazon. Thankfully, if you’ve been scouring the web for something affordable that will still sound better than your phone, Sony’s SRS-XB100 speaker is on sale at Amazon, Best Buy, and direct from Sony for as little as $48 ($12 off), its lowest price to date.

Despite its pint-size design, the XB100 manages to dish out crisp, clear sound with a surprising amount of low-end bass. The rugged little speaker offers up to 16 hours of continuous battery life and IP67 dust and water resistance, too, making it as suitable for an outing in the park as a pool party in your own backyard. You can even pair two XB100s together for stereo sound or use a single unit as a speakerphone, something that is seldom the case, even when you pony up for pricier Bluetooth speakers.

Read our Sony SRS-XB100 review.

Whether you want to admit it, back-to-school season is upon us. Fortunately for us deal hunters, the inevitable return to the classroom also means the return of back-to-school savings at places like Amazon and Best Buy. This year, eBay is also getting in on the action, offering 20 percent off select items through 11:59PM PT on August 6th when you apply offer code SAVE4SCHOOL at checkout.

As you might expect, eBay’s current promo covers a wide swath of gadgets and gizmos, from Philips Hue bulbs to LG’s unique StanbyME TV. One of the better deals available, however, is on the iRobot Roomba i4, which is available in refurbished condition via iRobot’s eBay storefront on its own for $139.99 ($110 off) or with an auto-empty dock for $219.99 ($130 off).

The Roomba i4 is nearly identical to our favorite budget robot vacuum, the Roomba i3 Evo, save for a longer runtime, which means it still packs smart mapping features, support for virtual assistants like Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, and a physical spot-cleaning button for those times when you want to clean up a small area on the fly. Both models also come with a two-year warranty from iRobot, just in case buying refurbished tech gives you the slightest bit of pause.

Read our robot vacuum buying guide.

A few additional deals and discounts

There’s more to eBay’s back-to-school promo than just vacuums. Now through August 6th, for instance, LG’s 48-inch C3 OLED is on sale at eBay via Electronic Express for $1,037.59 (about $262 off) when you use promo code SAVE4SCHOOL. The 4K TV isn’t a huge step up from LG’s already-fantastic C2 panel, but it does offer more processing power and a few new picture modes.
Amazon’s third-gen Echo Show 5 is down to $44.99 ($45 off) at Best Buy, Target, and The Home Depot, beating its Prime Day price by $5. The Alexa-based smart display is a lot like the second-gen model we reviewed in 2021, only with a snappier AZ2 chip and better speakers — two upgrades that help solidify the compact display as one of the better options for your desk or nightstand.
If you want a colorful piece of eye candy that will never wilt, Lego’s Wildflower Bouquet is currently on sale at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target for $52.99 ($7 off). That’s nearly the best price we’ve seen on the 939-piece Lego kit, which allows you to construct lavender stems, Welsh poppies, and several other types of flowers.
You can grab Sony’s WH-CH720N at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target for around $128 ($21 off). The budget-friendly headphones aren’t quite as impressive as Sony’s more premium models — most notably, the WH-1000XM5 — yet they still offer good sound, 35 hours of battery life, and active noise cancellation for far less.
The physical version of Tears of the Kingdom is still available at Amazon and Walmart for $56.99 ($13 off). Nintendo’s wildly creative sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild launched at $69.99, and while we have seen the excellent Switch title dip to as low as $52 or so, today’s deal remains worth pointing out given the sheer amount of game you get for the price. Read our review.

YouTube uses AI to summarize videos in latest test

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Google is experimenting with the use of AI to auto-generate YouTube video summaries, according to a notice on a support page dated July 31st. The page, which we spotted via Android Police, notes that these summaries will only appear next to a limited number of English-language videos, and will only be viewable by a limited number of users. They’ll appear on YouTube’s watch and search pages, and are intended to give a brief overview of a video’s contents without replacing its existing description written by a human.

“We’re starting to test AI auto-generated summaries on YouTube, so that it’s easier for you to read a quick summary about a video and decide whether it’s the right fit for you,” the support page reads. Android Police notes that users are typically able to sign up to participate in YouTube experiments over at YouTube.com/new, though participating in some tests may require a YouTube Premium subscription.

YouTube’s experiment is one of a raft of generative AI initiatives happening at Google right now, as the company races to find uses for the emerging technology. Back at its developer conference in May, for example, the company announced a new Play Store feature which aimed to use generative AI to summarize app user reviews. But of course, that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Google’s AI efforts which include a new Search Generative Experience, and Duet AI tools for its Workspace productivity apps.

Other companies have also attempted to use AI to auto-generate summaries of online content. Artifact, for example, recently launched a summary feature for news articles.

If they end up getting a wider rollout, it’ll be interesting to see if the AI summaries impact how YouTube creators structure their videos. Every policy change and new feature introduced by the video platform can have wide-ranging effects on its content ecosystem, as creators attempt to please its all-seeing yet obscure recommendation algorithm. Who knows what will happen when creators have to make videos for both humans and Google’s AI to understand?

Your Google data and YouTube videos will be easier to migrate after GDPR challenge

Google Takeout is getting new features that will allow users to upload their Google account data to third-party services. | Illustration: The Verge

Google is making it easier to backup and transfer your personal data between third-party services, in response to a GDPR investigation by Italy’s AGCM competition watchdog.

In a press release announcing the changes, the AGCM said that Google’s binding commitments will “ensure significant automation of the procedure available for data export,” and “improve the interoperability mechanism that makes the data available in the Google ecosystem accessible to third-party platforms.”

Google has made three commitments to resolve the investigation. The first two involve enhancing Google Takeout, while the third will introduce a new solution to “allow direct data portability from service to service” for authorized third-party operators, specifically regarding data generated through user activity on Google’s online search engine and YouTube platform.

As 9to5Google notes, the third commitment seems to build on work that Google is already undertaking within the Data Transfer Initiative — an open-source project backed by Meta, Apple, Google, and Microsoft that supports the direct transfer of user data between online platforms. The initiative already spawned a service-to-service transfer tool in 2020 that allows Facebook users to transfer their photos and videos to Google Photos without needing to manually download and re-upload the files.

The Google Takeout service already allows users to export their personal YouTube videos along with their search history and comments on the platform, for backup and preparation for export to third-party services. A “direct service-to-service portability solution” will make things easier and faster (no local downloads) for users and third-party operators. Google anticipates that this capability will be launched during the first quarter of 2024, and that third-party service providers will be able to test it “at least six months” prior to the official release.

The investigation began after Hoda, an Italian data export startup, accused Google of impeding its US users from sharing their personal data with other digital service platforms. By making Google’s proposed commitments binding, the AGCM has now closed its investigation.

Uber Posts 14% Rise in Revenue as Growth Slows

Uber Posts 14% Rise in Revenue as Growth Slows The company’s growth decelerated as the rebound from the pandemic normalized and its freight business declined. It also swung to a profit.

Meta’s AI ‘personas’ might launch next month

Illustration: Nick Barclay / The Verge

Meta could launch AI-powered “personas” in its services — which include Facebook and Instagram — as soon as next month, giving users a new way to search, get recommendations, and otherwise engage with its products, the Financial Times reports. Citing conversations with three company insiders, the FT notes that the chatbots could come with distinct personalities, including one that offers travel recommendations “in the style of a surfer” and another that speaks like Abraham Lincoln.

The imminent launch could help Meta compete on two fronts. On the one hand, built-in chatbots could be a way to boost engagement with services like Facebook and Instagram in the face of competition from the likes of TikTok. On the other, the chatbots could serve as a display of Meta’s AI capabilities as it competes with Microsoft-backed OpenAI and Google’s Bard.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been open about his plans to build “AI personas” into the company’s products. In February he announced the creation of a new product group focused on generative AI. “Over the longer term, we’ll focus on developing AI personas that can help people in a variety of ways,” Zuckerberg wrote. “We’re exploring experiences with text (like chat in WhatsApp and Messenger), with images (like creative Instagram filters and ad formats), and with video and multi-modal experiences.”

In early June, app researcher Alessandro Paluzzi spotted signs of a new “Chat with an AI” feature in the Instagram app that would be able to answer questions and give advice in the style of 30 different AI personalities. The chatbot could also help users compose messages, according to the leak.

Zuckerberg again mentioned the company’s AI initiatives in an earnings call last week. He said the company is building them using its own LLaMA large language model. “You can imagine lots of ways that AI can help people connect and express themselves in our apps, creative tools that make it easier and more fun to share content, agents that act as assistance, coaches or that can help you interact with businesses and creators and more,” the CEO said. More details on Meta’s AI road map are expected to be announced at its Connect developer event in September.

While the CEO’s comments have emphasized the benefits such chatbots could have for Meta’s users, the Financial Times notes that they could also provide the company with more data on their interests to help with ad targeting. In the past couple of months, rival social media company Snap has tested adding sponsored links into its ChatGPT-powered My AI chatbot.

A spokesperson from Meta did not immediately respond to The Verge’s request for comment.

lundi 31 juillet 2023

Twitter gets special permission to be ‘X’ in the iOS App Store

Illustration: The Verge

Twitter, which is rebranding as X, is now listed as X in the iOS App Store, suggesting the app got special treatment from Apple to allow a single-character name. The renaming was briefly hindered by a rule forbidding single-character app names within the App Store — the actual app name on iPhones and iPads already showed up as X.

The exception could be a sign Apple wants to keep the hatchet buried with X owner Elon Musk. Late last year, the then-CEO of Twitter accused Apple of threatening to remove the Twitter app from the store. After meeting with Apple CEO Tim Cook, Musk later said it was a simple “misunderstanding.”

Alongside the X rebranding, the company also updated its tagline in the store, from “it’s what’s happening” to “blaze your glory!” — a phrase that Musk tweeted (er, sorry, posted) this morning.

A screen shot of the App Store listing for the X app. — *Twitter is now simply “X” in the iOS App Store.*

Twitter has been clumsily transitioning to X for about the last week. The social network’s new “interim” logo, which was tweeted at Musk by a Twitter user and looks suspiciously like a Unicode symbol, was added to the site after Musk tweeted about it several times the day before. The symbol feels a little more permanent now as the company has jammed an obnoxious brightly-lit version of it on top of its headquarters in San Francisco.

The former official account of Twitter on the network also switched to simply @X after the handle was taken from a user who’d had it since 2007. But the company still has some ground to cover before the transition is complete. The Twitter.com domain name still doesn’t redirect to X.com (it’s currently the other way around), Twitter Blue is still Twitter Blue, and the company’s support page is still lousy with references to “Twitter.”

Loki season 2 looks like a race through time and space in new trailer

Loki’s first season ended by cracking the multiverse so wide open that it seemed like all of existence might be in serious jeopardy or at least on the verge of being conquered by a certain Kang. Both of those possibilities have seemed like they’re becoming realities judging from Marvel’s recent films, but in the first trailer for Loki’s upcoming second season, there appears to be some hope that things can still be put right.

After two Spider-Verse movies about people traveling to other dimensions and glitching out because they’re not supposed to be there, it’s interesting to see Loki (Tom Hiddleston) “time slipping” in Loki’s new season 2 trailer, both because of the visual similarities between the two phenomena and because it’s something few people understand. Somehow, the god of mischief is uncontrollably jumping to random points in the timeline, and while neither Time Variance Authority agent Mobius M. Mobius (Owen Wilson) nor agent Ouroboros (Ke Huy Quan) can explain why, all signs in Loki’s new trailer point to Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors) being the cause.

Marvel Studios’ #Loki Season 2, an Original series, is streaming October 6 only on #DisneyPlus. pic.twitter.com/nUfxRxwrkc
— Disney+ (@DisneyPlus) July 31, 2023

In addition to Loki’s timeslipping within the TVA — something that’s not supposed to be possible — the trailer establishes how many of the organization’s other employees, like Hunter B-15 (Wunmi Mosaku), Ravonna Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), Casey (Eugene Cordero), and Miss Minutes (Tara Strong), will once again find themselves navigating through strange timelines where things don’t always line up the way one might expect them to. What’s even more interesting, though, is the exchange Loki has with his alternate reality variant Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) about the two of them being gods and the brief glimpse the trailer features of one (or perhaps both of them) doing some fancy Asgardian magic.

Unsurprisingly, Majors’ Kang the Conqueror is both very present (see: Avengers: The Kang Dynasty) and doesn’t say all that much in the trailer, which leaves it unclear just how large a role he’ll have in Loki’s second season. But given that the villain formerly known as He Who Remains is meant to be the MCU’s next Big Bad™, one imagines that his role in Loki’s season 2 is going to be the subject of quite a bit of discussion when the show returns.

Loki season 2 premieres October 6th.

Microsoft argues its Activision Blizzard case with UK regulators

Illustration by William Joel / The Verge

Microsoft has submitted a new change of circumstances document to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) in the UK, arguing its case for its proposed Activision Blizzard deal to be reconsidered for approval.

The CMA first blocked Microsoft’s proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard in April, with the regulator making it clear it had concerns over the effect Microsoft’s acquisition could have on the emerging cloud gaming market. Weeks later, the European Commission then approved the deal thanks to Microsoft’s cloud gaming agreements with Nvidia, Boosteroid, and others and a commitment to the EU to open up cloud licensing access to Xbox and Activision Blizzard games.

Microsoft now argues the UK regulator should take into consideration its cloud gaming deals and the EU monitoring of them, a new Call of Duty agreement with Sony, and even fresh material from the FTC case “which undermines the [final report’s] conclusions.” Microsoft is also working on a final proposal to modify the merger agreement to address the CMA concerns more directly, which could involve selling off its cloud gaming rights in the UK.

*Details on Microsoft’s Sony agreement are heavily redacted.*

Microsoft’s document is heavily redacted, so references to the company’s 10-year agreement with Sony over Call of Duty don’t shed any new light on the deal terms. We also still don’t have details of Microsoft’s final proposal to restructure its Activision deal, either, but the CMA is looking for comments from Microsoft’s rivals by August 4th and will accept final undertakings or make a final order by August 29th.

That means we should get more details on Microsoft’s final proposal in the coming weeks. Microsoft recently agreed to an extension to its $68.7 billion deal with Activision, pushing the new deal deadline to October 18th. The extension gives Microsoft and Activision plenty of time to attempt to address the CMA’s cloud gaming concerns.

Twitter Threatens to Sue Center for Countering Digital Hate Over Research

Twitter Threatens to Sue Center for Countering Digital Hate Over Research The Center for Countering Digital Hate said it had received a letter from X, Twitter’s parent company, accusing it of trying to hurt the social platform with its research.

Sony’s latest PS5 beta supports Dolby Atmos and up to 8TB of M.2 SSD storage

A PlayStation 5 DualSense controller rests on a PlayStation 5 console. — Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Sony has started testing a new PlayStation 5 software beta that includes Dolby Atmos support, up to 8TB of M.2 SSD storage support, and a variety UI improvements. The beta is rolling out in select countries today and Sony typically makes beta features available to all PS5 consoles within a few months.

The biggest addition is Dolby Atmos support. In PS5 games it looks like Sony’s 3D Audio implementation (Tempest 3D AudioTech) will be compatible with Dolby Atmos devices like sound bars, TVs, or home theater systems. Media apps like Netflix can also update their apps on PS5 soon to support Dolby Atmos audio. “Tempest 3D AudioTech specifically renders to the Dolby Atmos audio devices in use – including overhead channels – allowing for even greater levels of immersion in the audioscapes of PS5 games,” explains Sony in a PlayStation blog.

The PS5 currently supports up to 4TB of expandable M.2 SSD storage, but that maximum is being increased to a 8TB limit with this beta software. You’ll still need an M.2 SSD that meets the minimum requirements (mostly 5,500 MB/s or faster), but a doubling of the storage limit means there are even more storage options for PS5 owners.

Sony is also adding a bunch of UI improvements and some quality of life changes with this latest PS5 software update. You can now mute the PS5 beep sound that chirps when you turn the console on or off, or when it goes into rest mode. Sony is also offering up the option to simply change the beep volume, too.

You’ll also get a new option to enable haptic feedback from a DualSense controller while navigating around the PS5 user interface. Sound effects like moving focus from one section to another will trigger haptics with this option enabled, alongside haptic feedback for when you reach the end of a scrollable section.

This controller haptic feedback is available alongside a new accessibility feature that lets you assign a second controller to one account to use it as an assist controller. This is great for helping children or friends complete a difficult part of a game, or navigating around the PS5 UI.

Sony is also improving the PS5 social aspects. You’ll now be able to invite players into a closed party without adding them to a group, and also send open or closed party invites to groups instead of just a single friend. Much like Discord, you can now see a preview of someone sharing their screen before you join a party, and it’s now easier to see which friends are in parties in the friends tab. Sony is also adding emoji reactions for messages.

You can sign up to get access to Sony’s PS5 betas right here, and this particular update should roll out to all PS5 consoles in the coming months.

New ‘X’ Sign on Twitter’s Headquarters in San Francisco Is Under Investigation

New ‘X’ Sign on Twitter’s Headquarters in San Francisco Is Under Investigation An “X” sign, installed on the roof of the company’s headquarters in San Francisco as part of its rebranding, lacked proper permits, officials said.

Is It an E-Bike, or a Motorcycle for Children?

Is It an E-Bike, or a Motorcycle for Children? With a throttle and no pedals, Super73’s new “electric balance bike” blurs the lines of regulation and safety. “No license, registration or insurance required,” its marketing promises.

dimanche 30 juillet 2023

‘X’ on Twitter’s Headquarters Faces Investigation Over Permit Violations

‘X’ on Twitter’s Headquarters Faces Investigation Over Permit Violations An “X” sign, installed on the roof of the company’s headquarters in San Francisco as part of its rebranding, lacked proper permits, officials said.

Apple confirms bug stops Screen Time limits from sticking for kids

Illustration: The Verge

If your kid has been mysteriously busting through the Screen Time limits you set on their Apple device, the Wall Street Journal might know why: the publication found that a bug has been preventing certain Screen Time limits set via the Family Sharing system from saving correctly for months. Apple was supposed to fix the issue back in May, but apparently the problem has persisted.

Apple’s Family Sharing system allows parents to put usage limits on their kids’ devices, with one of the key controls being the ability to monitor and limit their usage of specific apps and the device as a whole through a feature called Screen Time. The Journal reports finding that a specific setting known as Downtime, which blocks access to the entire device, has been failing to save correctly; in one case, someone had to set Downtime limits three times before the limit properly saved. In the meantime, kids might have had more access to their device than parents wanted.

Apple confirmed the ongoing bug to the the Journal and said that it’s working on solutions, but it didn’t offer any kind of timeline. “We are aware that some users may be experiencing an issue where Screen Time settings are unexpectedly reset,” Apple told the Journal. “We take these reports very seriously and we have been, and will continue, making updates to improve the situation.”

iPhone 15 Pro might get a titanium frame, thinner bezels, and a price hike

iPhone 14 Pro Max in-hand showing Dynamic Island displaying phone call info. — An iPhone 14 Pro Max. | Image: Nilay Patel / The Verge

Some big changes are expected to come to this year’s iPhone 15 Pro lineup — but they might come alongside a price hike, too. In Bloomberg this morning, reporter Mark Gurman confirmed a handful of details that have been floating around all year about what to expect when the next iPhone lineup is announced in just over a month.

The new Pro models will both come with titanium frames, instead of stainless steel, making them stronger and lighter, according to Gurman. Their screens will also have thinner bezels, thanks to a new display technology, shrinking the size of the black border by about a third. (Earlier leaks show what that might look like.) And as previously reported, expect the mute switch to be swapped out for a customizable button and the Lightning port to be replaced by USB-C.

That might all come at a price, though. Gurman says he expects a price increase outside the US, and “wouldn’t rule out a price increase in the US,” either. That follows reporting earlier this week and an analyst note suggesting prices could go up by up to $200 when it comes to the Max model.

Gurman mentions two other big upgrades coming to Apple’s devices this year. The standard iPhone model is expected to drop the notch in favor of the Dynamic Island, bringing it more on par with the Pro models. (Previously rumors suggested it’ll be stuck at a 60Hz refresh rate, though, instead of 120Hz like the Pros — and virtually all comparably priced Android phones.) Gurman also reports that the next Apple Watch processor, the S9, will have a “fairly sizable performance bump,” marking the first notable speed boost since 2020.

Apple normally announces its new iPhones and Apple Watches in mid-September. They’ll be going up against Samsung’s new lineup of folding and flipping phones, which were just updated this week.

Russia Takes Its Ukraine Information War Into Video Games

Russia Takes Its Ukraine Information War Into Video Games Propaganda is appearing in Minecraft and other popular games and discussion groups as the Kremlin tries to win over new audiences.