Microsoft and Amazon face UK regulator investigation over cloud services
Illustration: The Verge
The clouds are gathering over Microsoft’s Azure operations in the EU and now the UK, with the launch of a new investigation into major cloud service providers that also includes Amazon. The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is just about to wrap up its concerns over cloud gaming with Microsoft’s proposed Activision Blizzard acquisition, but it will soon turn its attention to Microsoft’s Azure cloud offerings and Amazon Web Services (AWS).
It’s part of a fresh investigation into public cloud providers in the UK, after telecoms regulator Ofcom “identified a number of features in the supply of cloud services that make it more difficult for customers to switch and use multiple cloud suppliers.”
Ofcom found issues with charges that cloud customers have to pay to move their data out of the cloud, discounts to only use one cloud provider, and technical barriers to switching between cloud providers. The CMA specifically calls out Microsoft, too. “Ofcom’s report also outlines concerns it has heard about the software licensing practices of some cloud providers, in particular Microsoft,” says the CMA in its press release today.
“The CMA’s independent inquiry group will now carry out an investigation to determine whether competition in this market is working well and if not, what action should be taken to address any issues it finds,” says Sarah Cardell, CEO of the CMA.
Although the CMA doesn’t specifically name Amazon, Ofcom’s market study identified that both Microsoft and Amazon control around 70-80 percent of the public cloud infrastructure in the UK and that it was “particularly concerned about the practices of Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft because of their market position.”
Ofcom and the CMA aren’t alone in their concerns over cloud market competition, either. The Cloud Infrastructure Services Providers in Europe (CISPE) trade group, which includes Amazon, filed an antitrust complaint with the EU last year. The group argues “Microsoft uses its dominance in productivity software to direct European customers to its own Azure cloud infrastructure to the detriment of European cloud infrastructure providers and users of IT services.”
Microsoft offered some licensing concessions more than a year ago, but they haven’t been enough to address the ongoing complaints. Google even publicly called out Microsoft’s cloud software licensing “tax” earlier this year, arguing that businesses have to pay extra when they want to run software like Office on other cloud networks.
“Microsoft publicly touts that if you run their software on Azure versus other vendors like AWS and GCP, it’s five times cheaper or it’s more expensive to run on us, basically because of the tax customers have to pay to Microsoft,” said Amit Zavery, head of platform at Google Cloud, in an interview with The Register earlier this year. “The price of the products are the same in terms of infrastructure and everything else, so the licensing cost is more expensive because of using providers other than Azure.”
Microsoft has been reportedly trying to fend off a full EU antitrust investigation, with Reuters reporting in March that it had offered to change its cloud computing practices. The EU has opened a formal antitrust investigation into Microsoft’s Teams bundling with Office, but we’re still waiting to hear if the regulator will also take up the Azure concerns.
The CMA’s market investigation could take 18 months to complete, with a statutory deadline set for April 4th, 2025. The UK regulator will outline theories of harm and any potential remedies that might address the situation. The UK regulator also has the power to “impose structural remedies which can require companies to sell parts of their business to improve competition.”
Is Sam Bankman-Fried’s defense even trying to win?
Even the defense’s opening statement was a bad look for Sam Bankman-Fried | Photo Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge
The prosecution came out swinging. Oddly, Bankman-Fried’s defense didn’t.
I have never seen Sam Bankman-Fried so still as he was during the prosecution’s opening statement. The characteristic leg-jiggling was absent. He barely moved as the prosecutor listed the evidence against him: internal company files, what customers were told, the testimony of his co-conspirators and his own words.
His hair was shorn, the result of a haircut from a fellow prisoner, the Wall Street Journal reported. He wore a suit bought at a discount at Macy’s, per the Journal; it hung on him. He appeared to have lost some weight.
Bankman-Fried, at this time last year, had a luxury lifestyle as the CEO of crypto exchange FTX, said the assistant US attorney, Thane Rehn, in the cadence of a high schooler delivering his lines in a student play. Bankman-Fried hung out with Tom Brady. He was on magazine covers, lived in a $30 million penthouse, and spent time with world politicians. “All of that was built on lies,” Rehn said.
In his opening statement, Rehn dodged explaining cryptocurrency to the jury. Instead, he punched hard on Bankman-Fried lying and stealing.
Bankman-Fried sat almost motionless, occasionally glancing at Rehn, as the prosecutor told the jury that Bankman-Fried sold stock in FTX and borrowed millions from lenders by lying.
The story Rehn told is familiar to anyone following the news. In May and June of 2022, Alameda Research — the crypto trading company ostensibly helmed by Caroline Ellison — didn’t have enough to pay its bills, so it pulled customer money to repay loans. By September, the hole in the FTX balance sheet was so big that customers could never be repaid.
When CoinDesk published its article in November 2022, people realized FTX was a house of cards, Rehn said. Meanwhile, Bankman-Fried tweeted. “FTX is fine. Assets are fine” and “We don’t invest customer assets even in treasuries.”
Pointing at Bankman-Fried, Rehn said, “This man stole billions of dollars from thousands of people.”
So how was the defense going to follow it up? I was very curious, having learned yesterday that Bankman-Fried had never been offered a plea deal since he and his attorneys had told the government they wouldn’t negotiate. Surely there would be some manner of evidence, some something, that would have made him so confident.
There was, instead, a metaphor.
Defense attorney Mark Cohen, with the energy of a patient father telling his obnoxious children a bedtime story, assured us that working at a startup was like building a plane while flying it, and that FTX the plane had flown right into the perfect storm: the crypto crash. Except, uh, he also said this: FTX “didn’t have a chief risk officer, which became an issue when the storm hit.”
The problem with this metaphor is that if FTX was a plane, it was a plane flying with a key component missing — namely, the risk officer, an executive whose job it is to, well, manage risk. This is sort of an important thing, as risks can be anything from reputational to regulatory to financial.
FTX was named such as it was because it was a futures exchange, which, to borrow a phrase from Bloomberg’s Matt Levine, “sits between the winners and losers of bets.” That means FTX can’t pay out what it owes the winners unless the losers pay up. Risk management is a crucial part of the business; risk officers exist to identify business’ potential risks, monitor, and mitigate them. This is to say nothing of the regulatory risks around crypto.
As Cohen droned on about airplanes, I couldn’t stop thinking about the missing risk officer. Bringing it up, I thought, was a tremendous mistake. The prosecution hadn’t mentioned it. Either Bankman-Fried is stupid — unlikely — or he deliberately didn’t hire a risk officer. Was he worried about what one might find?
Sure, as Cohen put it, Bankman-Fried was a math nerd who didn’t party. That paints a picture of someone who’s pretty deliberate, particularly since he immediately left MIT and went to work on Wall Street. If he had been a party-hardy trainwreck, I could see overlooking a risk officer in order to do another line, or a supermodel, or something else important. Why was the defense bringing this up?
But as Cohen tried to tell me that FTX’s and Alameda’s business relationships were “reasonable under the circumstances,” the lack of risk officer kept elbowing me in the ribs. “Sam acted in good faith and took reasonable business measures” is a pretty hard pill to swallow with that in mind.
Man, it’s no good when your defense lawyer has just made you sound worse than the prosecution already did. And while Cohen tried to make the common white-collar defense argument that Bankman-Fried, as CEO, was simply too busy to oversee what everyone did every day, he just made me more suspicious. That’s why you hire a risk officer and delegate! That’s the whole point! I could barely even hear Cohen blaming Caroline Ellison and Changpeng “CZ” Zhao for the debacle over the “no risk officer” ringing in my ears.
Following the defense’s opening statements, things got still worse for Bankman-Fried. The prosecution called its first witness, Marc-Antoine Julliard, whose money got stuck on FTX. Juilliard, who was born in Paris and lives in London, testified that he trusted FTX because Bankman-Fried came across as a leading figure of the industry. When he was evaluating the exchange, he thought the sheer volume of users was important, too — at the time, FTX was among the top three biggest exchanges. Plus, major VC firms had invested, and “they don’t commit hundreds of millions without doing due diligence, checking the books, the accountancy of the firm, going through several compliance process[es], so that was a vote of confidence for me,” Juilliard said. (Evidently he had not paid attention to the Elizabeth Holmes trial.)
He also noted FTX’s glossy ads — featuring Gisele Bündchen, for instance — suggested a very high budget. It wouldn’t make sense to spend that much money unless FTX had very strong financials, Juilliard figured. He opened an account, transferred in both regular money and cryptocurrency, and used the exchange to execute his plan: buying Bitcoin to sell back in five to ten years at higher prices.
In November 2022, things went bad for Julliard. He followed Bankman-Fried on Twitter, and read aloud the “FTX is fine. Assets are fine” tweets, along with “FTX has enough to cover all client holdings. We don’t invest client assets” and a few others, which gave Julliard the impression that his money was there — the problem might have been technical (anti-spam measures) or regulatory. When he tried to get his money out on November 8th, it was too late. We saw screenshots of his withdrawal attempts: $20,000 USD and about 4 Bitcoin, which were worth about $20,000 at the time: about $100,000 money, inaccessible.
It is a thankless task to cross-examine a customer whose money is gone, but Cohen tried anyway. He noted that Julliard was a licensed commodities broker, who was trading in crypto because he didn’t have to disclose it; that Julliard knew that crypto was new and risky, and that Julliard didn’t review the terms of service agreement he’d assented to when making his FTX account.
Well, sure, but so what?
The next witness called was Bankman-Fried’s former college (and FTX) roommate, Adam Yedidia, about whom I expect I will have much more to say tomorrow.
When the jury was dismissed, Bankman-Fried’s lawyers told the judge that he wasn’t getting his full Adderall doses in prison. The defense appeared to be setting up the grounds for an appeal — it’s previously argued that the prison withholding Adderall made it difficult for Bankman-Fried to prepare his defense. Given what I saw today, setting up an appeal seems wise. It is, at minimum, risk management.
Roku’s next update focuses on sports, live TV, and easier content discovery
Image: Roku
Today, Roku outlined a slew of new software features that owners of its streaming devices (or Roku TVs) can expect over the coming weeks and months. The company has over 73 million active accounts globally, and as always, it’s trying to increase the amount of time each of those users spends on the platform. This time, it’s doing so with a wide range of features, with some targeted at sports fans and others at casual viewers who want yet more help finding something to watch.
Roku’s sports hub will soon let you “favorite” your chosen teams, which will make it easier to track when games are happening and faster to hop into the relevant streaming app and start watching. Highlights are also coming to the sports section, and Roku says “users will be able to watch clips from recent sporting events they may have missed or want to relive.” The company is expanding its foray into sports with the addition of motorsports in early 2024. But even before that, Roku says it will support Max’s upcoming sports content sometime in the next few weeks.
Image: Roku
Sports favoriting will make it simpler to track specific teams.
With the proliferation of FAST (free ad-supported streaming television) channels across Roku and many other entertainment platforms in recent months, users have asked for easier customization and browsing options, and Roku has some solutions. It already lets you hide channels you’re not interested in, and soon, you’ll be able to go a step further and personalize the order of channels in the guide.
To help customers avoid indecision over the night’s entertainment, Roku is also refining its “What to Watch” section with new categories that drill deeper into specific categories like TV shows, movies, new and popular, and free-to-watch content. “New experiences related to a specific genre or topic such as food or home will roll out across the platform in the coming months. Within these new experiences, users can browse through a curated selection of entertainment specific to each genre,” the company said.
Image: Roku
You’ll soon be able to set Google Photos albums as the screensaver on Roku devices.
If you’re someone who uses Roku’s Photo Streams feature, the biggest news of this entire update might be the addition of Google Photos support. Now, you can link an album and have it appear as your screensaver. For owners of Roku’s smart home cameras, the company is also adding more thorough event history and instant notifications for customers with a subscription.
Image: Roku
Expert settings will allow for more extensive calibration.
This last new feature will be welcomed by picture quality nerds like myself: Roku is bringing its expert picture settings to all of its 4K-compatible devices. Previously available only via the company’s mobile app, now you’ll be able to adjust settings like color temperature, color space, gamma correction, and noise reduction right from the TV itself instead of reaching for your phone.
Rounding out the Roku OS 12.5 update is an “enhanced” music experience within The Roku Channel:
We’re enhancing the music experience in The Roku Channel to make it easier for customers to enjoy more than 250 video playlists from our partners, including Stingray, Vevo, and Warner Music Group. Whether they’re listening to “Relaxing Jazz,” watching “Iconic Music Videos,” or revisiting their favorite “Boy Bands,” users will enjoy a more immersive experience, with new controls to shuffle, skip ahead, add video playlists to their Save List for listening, receive recommendations for similar playlists, and more.
As for hardware, Roku is largely sticking with its existing product lineup this fall. The company recently announced an Amazon-exclusive bundle that pairs the Roku Express 4K with the Voice Remote Pro, but it looks like the streaming player portfolio is locked in for the remainder of the year.
Roku customers in the US can expect the 12.5 OS update to start popping up sometime over the next few weeks.
How to Make the Audio in Your Projects Sound Better The right hardware and software — combined with time to learn — can improve the soundtrack in your videos, podcasts and other creative endeavors.
Meta’s new AI-generated stickers are lewd, rude, and occasionally nude
Would you believe this was probably the safest image we could have used here? | Image: Meta /@Pioldes
Some early user tests for Meta’s new AI-generated sticker tool have resulted in some dubious (and rather hilarious) creations. After gaining access to the new AI-generated sticker tool on Facebook Messenger, X user @Pioldes was able to create a host of inappropriate sticker images — including child soldiers, gun-wielding Nintendo characters, Mickey Mouse taking a crap, and nude illustrations of Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau.
Other examples show that Meta’s AI-sticker tool will also happily slap a pair of breasts onto…well, just about anything, judging by the busty images of Sonic the Hedgehog and Karl Marx. There’s even a sticker that depicts a woman breastfeeding Pikachu.
found out that facebook messenger has ai generated stickers now and I don't think anyone involved has thought anything through pic.twitter.com/co987cRhyu
The AI-generated chat stickers were announced last week at Meta’s Connect event, alongside a new AI image editor for Instagram. Powered by Meta’s Llama 2 large language model — the company’s ChatGPT rival — AI-generated stickers allow users to create “multiple unique, high-quality stickers in seconds” using text-based prompts. AI-generated stickers are currently rolling out to “select English language users” for Facebook Stories, Instagram Stories and DMs, Messenger, and WhatsApp over this month, so it’s unclear how many users currently have access to the feature.
This sort of tomfoolery is common with the launch of AI tools and likely why Meta is pursuing a limited rollout of the AI-generated sticker feature. That way it can address and correct abuse before it spreads to the masses. We have reached out to Meta for comment and will update this story if we hear back.
Nintendo’s Wii U and 3DS online services will shut down in April
Photo by Sam Byford / The Verge
Next spring, Nintendo will shut down the online services behind nearly all 3DS and Wii U software, affecting both first-party titles and third-party software (with some exceptions). News of this early April 2024 shutdown follows the return of online features for the Wii U versions of Mario Kart 8 and Splatoon, which had disappeared between March and August while Nintendo dealt with “vulnerability related to online play.”
One title that will continue operating, for now, is Pokémon Bank, and gaming offline is still possible. Also, this FAQ from Nintendo says that players will be able to download patches and redownload games purchased from the eShop “for the foreseeable future.” eShop sales of Wii U and 3DS games ended in March of this year.
As of early April 2024, online play and other functionality that uses online communication will end service for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U software. Thank you very much for your continued support of our products.
SpotPass features are also going away, but Nintendo says that StreetPass between 3DS family systems will continue to work anywhere you can find someone else who has one, even after these servers go away.
This planned early April 2024 shutdown will occur just over ten years after the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection Service went offline, ending online services for Nintendo’s Wii and DS titles in 2014.
With 13 million or so sales since its 2012 launch, the Wii U was one of the worst-performing consoles in Nintendo’s history. After it was discontinued in 2017, the company moved on from that era with ports and sequels of its best games that made the originals seem obsolete. Earlier this year, there were reports of memory errors that may make maintaining archives of the system’s games on original hardware even more difficult.
The 3DS had a slow start when it launched in 2010 but eventually moved over 75 million units, with strong sales that continued even after the launch of the Switch before it was discontinued in 2020.
If you’re wondering what this suggests for the future of Nintendo’s other online services, this summer, its CEO Shuntaro Furukawa said the current Nintendo Account system is key to smooth its transition to a new generation of hardware after the Switch. He noted how difficult it was to rebuild customer relationships each time it launched a new network with previous systems.
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.
As noted by Bloomberg, Delaware Chancery Court Judge Kathaleen St. J. McCormick ruled in favor of former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, former lead policy officer Vijaya Gadde, and other executives, as Twitter “violated its duties to cover legal expenses generated by their work for the company.”
Elon Musk fired Agrawal and other high-level leaders once he took over the company and after Twitter sued Musk for attempting to back out of his agreement for the $44 billion acquisition.
In April, Agrawal and Gadde filed a lawsuit against X for allegedly failing to pay for their legal bills, including bills for Gadde’s appearance before the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. X has only paid around $600,000 of the amount owed, Bloomberg reports, with the company’s lawyer saying X officials got “sticker shock” after they saw the “quite excessive” $1.1 million legal bill from Gadde’s lawyers.
While Judge McCormick agreed that $1.1 million is a lot of money, she still ruled in the former Twitter executive’s favor. “I have reviewed the amount in question, and although it is high and probably higher than most humans would like to pay, it’s not unreasonable,” Judge McCormick said, according to Bloomberg.”
Microsoft makes the Windows 11 setup process less boring with an entertaining Easter egg
Microsoft’s SkiFree-like game appears when setting up a Surface Laptop Studio 2. | Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge
Microsoft is making the Windows 11 setup process a little more entertaining, at least on some laptops. I unboxed the Surface Laptop Studio 2 yesterday (read Monica Chin’s review here) and noticed that Microsoft now prompts you to play the modern version of its SkiFree game while you wait for updates to be applied.
It’s the same secret surfing game that Microsoft added to its Edge browser three years ago, a fun little Easter egg that’s very similar to the SkiFree skiing game that was released as part of Microsoft’s Entertainment Pack 3 for Windows back in 1991.
Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge
Playing Microsoft’s surfing game.
The game appears as an option if there are outstanding Windows updates available or if you’re restoring settings using Windows Backup, as far as I can tell. I’m not entirely sure if this is limited to just new Surface devices or whether Microsoft has added the game to the Windows 11 setup process in general. I asked Microsoft for more information on this addition, but the company hasn’t responded in time for publication.
Either way, it’s a fun addition to the often boring Windows setup process. Microsoft has come a long way with its out-of-box installation process in Windows in recent years, with Windows 10 improving on the work of Windows 8 to serve up a more modern and simplified process. I’m old enough to remember how unfriendly setting up a Windows laptop was more than a decade ago, and Windows 11 is a refreshing change.
It’s also far better to be offered a game than having Cortana shout at you when you’re trying to configure a bunch of laptops.
Instacart will accept Medicare Advantage for grocery orders
Image: Instacart
Instacart is expanding its payment options next year to include Medicare Advantage, Medicaid, and other supplement health benefits for grocery deliveries. The move comes after the company began accepting food stamps as payment earlier this year.
The program, which will be administered through Alignment Health, will allow anyone who receives health insurance through Medicare Advantage, Medicaid and other eligible programs to use their plan-sponsored funds to purchase “eligible groceries, wellness essentials, and over-the-counter medications for delivery via Instacart,” the company said.
The goal is to improve access to nutritious food and over-the-counter medicines for seniors, many whom experience food insecurity as a result of transportation challenges and economic instability.
“The new plans will give participating seniors greater independence, convenience, and the dignity of choice to select the essentials they need to support their health from Instacart’s broad selection of retail partners,” Sarah Mastrorocco, Vice President and General Manager of Instacart Health, said in a blog post.
Instacart has been working to expand payment options to people on food stamps or other welfare programs for years now. The company partnered with grocery outlet Aldi on a pilot three years ago. Earlier this year, it announced that it now accepts food stamps in all 50 states.
Most delivery platform apps aren’t equipped to accept food stamps as a universal form of payment, though that may be changing. Uber Eats announced recently it would begin to accept food stamps.
An estimated 31 million people are enrolled in Medicare Advantage, while 92 million are on Medicaid. SNAP is the biggest food assistance program in the US, with an estimated 41.2 million people receiving monthly benefits in the 2022 fiscal year, according to the Pew Research Center.
Ford’s new F-150 Lightning Flash trim will have more range, a bigger screen, and a heat pump
Image: Ford
Ford announced a new “Flash” trim of the model year 2024 F-150 Lighting, with a bigger screen, longer range, and a heat pump to help improve battery conditioning on those colder days. The company said it is also expecting to make more F-150 Lightning deliveries to customers later this year after a factory shutdown restricted Ford’s supply of the electric truck.
Ford says it is targeting an EPA-estimated range for Flash of 320 miles, which would fit neatly in between the automaker’s Standard Range and Long Range models. The F-150 Lightning Standard Range typically gets less than 300 miles of EPA-estimated range, while Extended Range variants can travel as far as 350 miles on a single charge.
A heat pump will also be included with Flash, a nod to customers who have complained that cold weather tends to sap the F-150 Lightning’s battery. Heat pumps can keep batteries at a more optimal temperature during the winter months, which helps with charging times, range, and performance. More and more EVs are coming with standard heat pumps as the auto industry begins to recognize their utility.
The new tech in Flash includes a 15.5-inch touchscreen as standard, which is currently only found in the Lariat and Platinum trims. Price-wise, the F-150 Lightning Flash will sit above the XLT in the model lineup, with a $69,995 price tag and an expected delivery sometime next year.
Marin Gjaja, chief operating officer of Ford’s EV-focused model e division, said the goal was to put some of the features in the more expensive models that customers like the most in a more affordable profile.
“We don’t actually have a vehicle at this price point that’s equipped in this way,” Gjaja said in a briefing with reporters Monday. “So if you look at the way that Flash is equipped, it has some of the features that a Lariat has, and has some of the features that an XLT has, and not surprisingly, it lands at a price between the two of them.”
Affordability is a crucial subject for Ford, especially as it relates to the F-150 Lightning. Recent price hikes have caused some customers with pre-orders to cancel their reservations.
The new trim aside, the flow of F-150 Lightnings to customers should improve this fall now that the company’s Rogue Electric Vehicle Center reopened in August. The factory was closed for six weeks to expand and retool the plant for increased production capacity.
The first hint that Flash was coming was when Electrek spotted a trademark filing for the name earlier this year. At the time, it was assumed the name was applied to a performance version of the truck, coming on the heels of a partnership between Ford and Red Bull Powertrains on next-gen hybrid power units. But now we know that won’t be how it’s used.
The F-150 Lightning Flash won’t have the curb appeal of the new Platinum Black edition of the electric truck, with its factory-applied matte black exterior and limited production run. But the introduction of a new trim is a sure-fire sign that Ford is ramping up its hopes for the Lightning to help boost sales and slow the EV cash burn. The company has said it will lose $4.5 billion on its EV business in 2023.
“We will not rest,” Gjaja said. “Our plan is to scale production and scale demand for our EVs with a focus on profitability.”
Takeaways From a New Book on Sam Bankman-Fried “Going Infinite,” by Michael Lewis, offers a behind-the-scenes account of Mr. Bankman-Fried’s rise and fall.
Nobel Prize awarded to duo who made rapid covid vaccines possible
Katalin Karikó (left) and Drew Weissman’s (right) research into mRNA was used to develop covid-19 vaccinations. | Image: Nobel Prize
American scientists Katalin Karikó (a Hungarian-born biochemist) and Drew Weissman (an immunologist and professor of vaccine research) have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their research on messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA), which contributed towards the development of effective covid-19 vaccines (seen via The New York Times). mRNA vaccines have an advantage over traditional vaccines in that they can be quickly designed and safely manufactured at scale with fewer errors.
Seven years after they first met at the University of Pennsylvania in 1998, Karikó and Weissman published their findings on mRNA. The scientists found that they could add altered mRNA to cells, prompting them to create any protein they desired. These protein molecules, normally produced using a modified virus, would then stimulate an adaptive immune response to teach the body how to destroy invading pathogens. The trailblazing work was later used by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech to develop competing covid vaccines in record time.
The prize is the first of six Nobel Prizes that will be awarded this year, with the remaining winners to be announced over the coming week. As the winnings — which are set at 11 million Swedish kronor (around $1 million) for 2023 — are awarded per full Nobel Prize, Karikó and Weissman will split the cash.
Tesla Sales Slip as It Readies Factories for New Models Analysts expected a decline in sales for the quarter. Still, the dip may raise concerns about flagging demand.
How a Pricing Change Led to a Revolt by Unity’s Video Game Developers In an industry where customers are slow to trust and quick to criticize, a new fee from Unity infuriated studios that use its platform.
Tesla rolls out an updated Model Y in China but keeps the same starting price
The new Model Y for China looks a lot like the old one. | Screenshot: Wes Davis / The Verge
Tesla's China arm announced in a WeChat post Sunday morning that it released a new Model Y with design and performance tweaks that keeps the same starting price as before (via Reuters). The new car follows the company’s release of the revamped "Highland" Model 3 in China, which also hit Europe early last month.
According to Tesla’s Chinese website, the Model Y now has a 0–100km/h time of 5.9 seconds, which Bloombergnotes in a report is slightly faster than before. The car gets new wheels and an ambient LED lighting strip in the dash, like the refreshed Model 3.
Screenshot: Wes Davis / The Verge
If you squint, you can see the new LED strip along the front.
The car starts at 263,900 yuan (about $37,000), and the company offers both a long-range version for 299,900 yuan (about $42,000) and a high-performance version for 349,900 yuan (about $49,000). Tesla has not announced the updated Model Y — or the Model 3, for that matter — in the US. Here are some cropped images from Tesla’s WeChat post announcing the updated car:
Image: Tesla
The updated dashboard and wheels. Image: Tesla
The Model Y is mostly unchanged elsewhere.
Apple plans to upgrade the App Store’s search engine, and it might not stop there
Illustration: The Verge
Apple will soon bring its powerful internal search engine to the App Store and other apps, as Mark Gurman reports in this week’s Power On newsletter for Bloomberg. Apple debuted upgrades to its Spotlight search feature in iOS 14 and iPadOS 14, letting users search there for web results, details from apps, documents, and much more.
According to the newsletter, former Google executive John Giannandrea’s search team is working to bake the internally-named “Pegasus” search engine more deeply into iOS and macOS and could even use generative AI tools to enhance it further. Last year Apple also launched Business Connect, a tool that helped strengthen its information database with details about businesses’ hours and locations in a way that could help it compete with Google.
Gurman points out that although Apple’s Spotlight and app search engine isn’t as powerful as Google’s, it has a robust App Store ads business that serves ads to its other apps, like Apple News and Weather. Those things combined give Apple enough pieces to launch its own search engine, perhaps sooner rather than later.
A leaked Google ‘Switch to Pixel’ ad highlights Pixel 8 AI features
A leaked Pixel 8 “Switch to Pixel” ad posted to X by Arséne Lupin highlights Google’s AI features, including Best Take, which lets you swap faces into an image from other pictures (via 9to5Google). Google’s Pixel event is just around the corner on October 4th, but there’s seemingly very little we don’t already know about the phone, considering the steady stream of leaks.
The ad kicks off highlighting the process for transferring data to a Pixel 8, but spends most of its time on the AI features of the phone — some new, like Best Take, and some old, like Magic Eraser:
9to5Google also points to a leak from Kamila Wojciechowska, who posted apparent marketing materials showing updated first-party silicone Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro cases. Wojciechowska says the Pixel 8 cases will come in Rose, Mint, Charcoal, and Hazel colors, while the Pixel 8 Pro cases will get Bay, Charcoal, Mint, and Porcelain. They look a lot like last year’s cases.
The Pixel Watch exceeded expectations — now it needs to be as good as Samsung
The Pixel Watch 2 is a golden opportunity for Google to prove it’s serious about wearables. | Photography by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
After I reviewed the Pixel Watch last year, skeptics kept asking me the same questions over and over again: Do you think Google’s actually going to keep this thing going? Do you think it’s going to ax the Pixel Watch if it doesn’t sell?
These are fair questions to ask. Despite being among the first to the wearable scene in 2014, it let Android Wear and then Wear OS languish for years. Plus, Google’s graveyard of abandoned projects is notoriously vast. While I was pretty confident we’d see a Pixel Watch 2, I didn’t think the Pixel Watch — a better-than-expected debut with some very first-gen flaws — would succeed to the degree it did. During Q4 2022 (aka the holiday season), Google leapfrogged Samsung to become the No. 2 bestselling wearable maker behind Apple, shipping 880,000 units.
But the question remains. Can Google keep the momentum going?
Now would be the best time to prove that it can. Apple and Samsung have already launched their 2023 flagship smartwatches — and while all are excellent, they’re the definition of iterative. Both companies are long-term players in this field, too. Each new Apple Watch or Galaxy Watch is a refinement of the last. As a newcomer, Google has a lot more room to grow.
On the flip side, the Pixel Watch’s flaws were easier to forgive because it was a debut smartwatch. It’s a rare gadget that knocks it out of the park on a first attempt. It didn’t help that last year’s Google wearable lineup was a confusing jumble of three smartwatches. To differentiate between the Pixel Watch, Fitbit Versa 4, and Fitbit Sense 2, Google nerfed the Pixel Watch’s health features and the Fitbit smartwatches’ previously available smart features. Battery life at launch was also the pits. You could only get the estimated 24 hours if you babied the battery and turned the always-on display off.
Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
Battery life was a major complaint with the Pixel Watch. Addressing that would go a long way.
Some of this has since been addressed in subsequentsoftwareupdates. But the Pixel Watch 2 is an opportunity to show that Google not only listened to feedback but also dealt with it. If it doesn’t, it’s harder to turn a blind eye to known issues on a sophomore attempt, especially since there’s no reason it shouldn’t be able to improve battery life, expand health features, and deliver a better user experience. Google has a decade’s worth of rival smartwatches to draw inspiration from. Unlike Apple or Samsung, Google doesn’t have to revolutionize smartwatches to drum up excitement around the Pixel Watch 2. It just has to be noticeably better than last year’s.
Really, it only has to deliver a similar experience to the Galaxy Watch 6. Samsung and Google have both given up on winning over iOS users because their Wear OS watches are Android only. So this is to see who reigns over the incredibly fragmented Android smartwatch market.
For the past 10 years, Samsung has been the de facto leader partly because it had solid products and partly because everyone else was a hot mess. This is in spite of the fact that some of its health features, like EKGs, are gatekept to Samsung phone users. Fossil watches, while prolific, have always been design-first, with middling smarts and health features second. Garmins served a specific niche of outdoorsy athletes. Mobvoi had a decent shot with loyal TicWatch fans until it fumbled the transition to Wear OS 3. Huawei watches, while good, have been stymied by trade bans. Montblanc watches cost $1,000.
Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
Thinner bezels on the Pixel Watch 2 would be nice, but I’m not holding my breath.
It would not take a lot for Google to own this space. It’s already succeeding in convincing third-party makers to hop aboard the Wear OS train. Xiaomi is the latest to ditch a proprietary OS for the platform with its newly announced Watch 2 Pro. The allure of the Play Store is just too strong. (Speaking of which, Google’s been hard at work getting third-party app developers to actually buy in.) So long as the Pixel Watch 2 doesn’t fall on its face, the pressure is on for Samsung to show everyone something they haven’t seen before. And that’s a lot harder to do.
For all these reasons, a lot is actually riding on the Pixel Watch 2 when it’s unveiled on October 4th. A success won’t put Samsung down for the count, but it will make my job (and many others) of picking the best Android smartwatch a lot harder. A flop... well, that just adds more fodder for Google’s reputation as a company with big ideas and no follow-through.
The best Google alternative I’ve tried yet
Image: William Joel / The Verge
Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 8, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, first of all, hi, hello, welcome, and second of all, you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)
I also have for you a new VR / AR / MR headset, a browser you should download everywhere, an awesome Android launcher, some Baldur’s Gate 3 fanfiction, and much more. (Also, Linda Yaccarino, I have a lot of questions about your homescreen, so if you want to be in next week’s issue, get at me. Mail and Gmail? Really?)
As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What do you want to know more about? What awesome tricks do you know that everyone else should? What app should everyone be using? Tell me everything: installer@theverge.com. And if you want to get every issue of Installer a day early in your email inbox you can subscribe here.
Okay. Let’s go.
The Drop
Meta Quest 3. It’s not VR anymore, it’s mixed reality. The $499.99 Quest 3 seems to be a big improvement on the Quest 2, and in a brief demo, it showed some pretty solid mixed reality chops. But I’m genuinely curious: do you care about headsets? Are they the future / too early / totally stupid? I think they’re really interesting game consoles and maybe cool TV setups. But I want to know what you think! Email me all your thoughts (and fave Quest apps if you have ’em): installer@theverge.com.
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar. I love a filmmaking experiment, and this has been a fun one: Wes Anderson made a bunch of short films based on Roald Dahl stories, and they’ve been dropping on Netflix all week. It’s kind of a show, kind of a movie in four parts, kind of an old-fashioned web series? Whatever it is, it’s delightful.
ChatGPT’s voice commands. Two good things happened to ChatGPT this week: it got back the ability to browse the web in real time, and it became a really handy voice assistant. (You’ll need the $20 a month ChatGPT Plus subscription to get them, at least for now.) I now ask ChatGPT all the questions Siri never seems to get right, and it’s pretty impressive. It still makes mistakes and can’t do basic things like share a link, but it’s the most usable voice assistant I’ve ever tried.
macOS Sonoma. I include this otherwise relatively straightforward operating system update for one reason and one reason only: the screensavers. Apple basically took those gorgeous, moving screensavers from the Apple TV and ported them to the Mac, and they look so good. Also, you know, widgets and whatever. But the screensavers.
Raspberry Pi 5. There’s still no better computer tinker toy than a Raspberry Pi. The new one, which starts at $60, is a spec upgrade across the board, and it’s as easy as ever to make it a smart home controller / simple media computer / basically anything else you can think of. I’m certainly no computer-building genius, but I’ve had a blast for years playing with these. And with the new Pi OS coming next month, this one will be even more powerful out of the box.
The Creator. This movie has a premise I’m sure you’ve seen a million times before — humans fighting the AI takeover, what does it mean to be human, yadda, yadda, yadda. The Verge’s Charles Pulliam-Moore was left somewhat cold by the movie’s big ideas, but if nothing else, it sounds like totally gorgeous sci-fi. One for the big screen for sure.
The Vivaldi browser. Vivaldi is one of my absolute favorite browsers. It’s superfast, wildly customizable, and as of this week, available just about everywhere! The new iOS app syncs easily with your other browsers, and just like other platforms, has a huge amount of options and features. (The Android app has been around for a while and is terrific.) Plus: an actual tab bar on my phone? You love to see it.
Windows 11’s fall update. Microsoft would tell you the big upgrade this fall is Copilot, its built-in AI assistant for getting things done all over the OS. I’m also into the File Explorer redesign. But I’d argue the new Paint — which got a bunch of Photoshop-lite-ish features like layers and transparency and is getting AI tools for editing and creating images — is going to be an even bigger win for most people.
Murder in the 21st. This new show, a true crime series looking at some major investigations and murders through the lens of the victims’ digital footprints, is going to be very popular in my house. It’s the most iconic crossover of my family’s interests since Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce started hanging out.
Spotlight
One thing I’ve struggled with in Installer so far is how to talk about things that aren’t new but not everybody knows about. I don’t want to bore you with stuff like, “Have you heard of the iPhone, it’s neat!” but I also do see more stuff than your average internet person, you know? So I figure, let’s try this: when I come across something cool that’s new to me (and reasonably likely to be new to most people), I’m going to share a bit about it and why it’s worth checking out.
First up, and the reason I’ve been thinking about this section at all: I’ve become a total convert to the Kagi search engine. I wrote a big story about Neeva and search a few months ago, and a bunch of people were like, “Try Kagi! It’s awesome!” It is, in fact, awesome. Here’s what I like about it:
It’s customizable. Kagi looks a lot like Google and generally feels very similar to use. But unlike Google, Kagi lets you block sites you don’t like and promote sites you do like. You can also create “lenses” to only search certain sites or domains — Kagi has a bunch built in, too, like a “Small Web” lens that favors blogs, forums, and other parts of the web that tend to get blotted out by the giants.
No ads. The catch with Kagi is you have to pay for it. You get a few searches a month for free, but $10 buys you unlimited access. That’s a lot of money for a search engine! But the pages are so much cleaner and less confusing that I was surprised how quickly I paid up.
It’s great for videos and podcasts. Podcast search is, like, impossible. But I’ve had surprisingly good luck Kagi-ing topics I’m interested in and finding related podcast episodes, and the engine does a similarly good job of scouring YouTube for interesting stuff.
Its AI is handy but not in the way. For a lot of queries, Kagi puts a little “Quick Answer” button at the top — click it, and you get a brief AI-generated answer, with cited sources you can click on. That’s exactly the amount of AI I’m looking for in most of my searches.
The mobile browser is great. Kagi’s mobile app is a browser called Orion, and it’s as no-frills a mobile browser as you’ll find. But that’s cool by me! It’s fast and easy to use. You can also supposedly download Kagi as a Safari extension on iOS, but I haven’t managed to make that work. (On Android, you can just switch to Kagi as your default search engine because Android is much better at this.)
It seems… good? I’ve tried basically all the search engines, and I usually end up back on Google because Google has better results. (Or at least the results I’m expecting and looking for.) With Kagi, I’ve found myself going back to Google less than usual. I don’t know if that’ll hold up forever, but I’m impressed so far.
Ten bucks for search, when Google exists and is great and is free, is a tough ask. But Kagi CEO Vladimir Prelovac tells me the company’s doing well and growing quickly and says he knows he’s not going to reach Google scale with Kagi but also says he doesn’t need to. “I have all the respect for Google and their people and technology,” he says, “I just don’t like their business model.”
So far, I’m sold just because I can make the search engine work the way I want it to. That’s worth the price to me, at least for now. But I also want to know: do you use a non-Google search engine? What would make you switch? Does anyone even care about search as long as you find what you’re looking for? Let me know; I’m all ears.
Screen share
Ash Parrish always seems to be playing 35 games at once. As The Verge’s gaming reporter, she’s covering everything from the nooks and crannies of Hyrule to the huge businesses of Epic and Unity — and all the chaos and culture in between. And I’ve learned that every time she gets excited about a game, either on The Verge or just in Slack, I should write it down and play it ASAP.
That’s part of why I asked Ash to share her homescreen with us this week, along with some things she’s into. Because if Ash is into it, it tends to rule. So here’s what’s on Ash’s homescreen, plus some info on the apps she uses and why:
The Phone: A Samsung Galaxy S21 that’s had its life saved many times by a cheapo Amazon phone case.
The Apps: My homescreen is a mixture of priority work and communication apps along with the fun stuff. I’ve got Slack, X / Twitter, Gmail, and Facebook Messenger (which, oddly, is the primary way I communicate with my husband). Beyond that, I’ve got Google Maps, DoorDash, and a neat photo app called BeautyCam that takes the best selfies. I have the Overwatch League app so I can keep track of my teams, schedules, and standings because the Grand Finals (which will most likely be the last Grand Finals ever) is going on right now.
Finally, I am neatly, firmly, and happily in Baldur’s Gate 3 hell. I eat, sleep, and breathe this game, and my mind is so ravenous for content that I’ve adopted habits I haven’t had since my younger years as a fixture in the Dragon Age fandom. I’ve downloaded (or redownloaded) so many apps that I hope will deliver me the fan content I crave. Tumblr’s for fan art, Archive Reader is the unofficial Archive of Our Own app that I use to read fanfiction. And because my chosen Baldur’s Gate 3 pairing isn’t the most popular, I downloaded Wattpad in hopes of finding more fanfiction that feeds my needs. (I have not. Wattpad… doesn’t have the greatest content.)
The wallpaper: I got married last year, and this is one of my favorite pictures that was taken. That’s me and my husband cutting our cake in our sunroom. Look at that man! In’ he cute!
I also asked Ash to share a few other things she’s into. Here’s what she said:
Google Docs.Baldur’s Gate 3 has awoken one of my primal animating forces: writing fanfiction. After years of being out of the game, I’ve started writing again with a zeal I haven’t seen since I was 25 spending a whole eight-hour shift at my office job writing a 21,000-word fic in one sitting.
The Roman Empire. You know that meme going around about how a lot of women don’t understand how often the men in their lives think about the Roman Empire? Well, I’m one of the women who constantly thinks about the Roman Empire. Epic CEO Tim Sweeney posted a now poorly aged tweet likening Epic to the Roman Empire. (The screenshot was from a movie and featured Roman soldiers in a forest. I spent about an hour trying to track down the battle referenced in that movie to see if it was one of the many times the Romans got their ass beat by Germanic tribes, which would have made Sweeney’s tweet oddly prescient. My results were inconclusive.)
TheOverwatchLeague. I don’t like meat sports, but I love esports. And of the many esports, the Overwatch League is my favorite to watch. However, because of reasons, this season will likely be the last. And worse than that, this season wasn’t that interesting to me. But the Hangzhou Spark, a team from a country where you cannot even officially play Overwatch, just beat the team highly favored to win it all, reminding me of how much I love this game. I’m rooting for the Spark to win now. It’d be a fitting end to something that has brought me so much joy.
Crowdsourced
Here’s what the Installer community is into this week. I want to know what you’re into right now as well! Emailinstaller@theverge.comwith your recommendations for anything and everything, and we’ll feature some of our favorites here every week.
“Energiza Pro, an app for better battery life in the long term. I bought it a few weeks ago. I’m finding it very useful.” – Dennis
“Radio Paradise plays an electric mix of music, ad-free, totally free, and has multiple ‘Mixes’ you can listen to (Rock, Mellow, Main, Global). They play a great mix of music I wouldn’t usually listen to, and you can skip the song if you don’t like it. They even let you customize the stream quality from Low to FLAC quality. They just updated the app to a new interface and are fully listener-supported, and I give when I can.” – Jonathan
“Bombas socks and Kizik shoes. Both the socks and shoes are so comfortable, and the shoes are easy to put on / slip on and off.” – Marty
“Not sure if this is a new feature, but I just noticed when you’re viewing all tabs in mobile Safari, you can long-press the button that shows how many tabs you have, and it will pop up an option to copy all the links to your clipboard! I’m a pretty obsessive iPhone tips reader and haven’t seen this one before.” – Andrew
“Recently, I’ve been sucked back into Thumper, one of my favorite games of all time. This playthrough on iOS!” – Arden
“My favorite launcher of all time is the Z launcher by Nokia. It’s been unsupported for a while now and was eventually taken off the app store (breaking my heart). My second favorite launcher, and the one I’m currently using, is Niagara Launcher. It’s clean (making your wallpaper visible), can adjust pinned apps automatically by usage, and most importantly, can find any app on your phone one-handed. I love the app scrollbar (reminiscent of the One UI app settings scrollbar) since you can accurately get to any app on your phone in a fraction of a second.” – Samuel
“Raycast! It’s this powerful and modern Spotlight replacement for Mac that’s similar to Alfred but way better and more modern. I use it all day, every day, and it just keeps getting better. Part of it is due to software updates and new features but most of all because I dig deeper into all the amazing and powerful community-made extensions for it!” – Edvard
“I’m really liking Death Glitch by Tamara Kneese about how the social platforms and internet culture handle user death. And obvs, I hear really great things about Kashmir Hill’s new book.” – Joe
Signing off
This week, the folks at the Dropout streaming service announced that, five years after launch, they’re fully getting rid of the name they had before — CollegeHumor. Dropout is great, love Dropout, go watch Dropout, but the official end of CH sent me down the deepest YouTube rabbit hole this week. Have you watched Pete Holmes as Badman? Trust me, watch it again. Then, go watch all of “Troopers,” the fantastic Star Wars parody. “If Google Was a Guy” is still one of the funniest tech-related things ever. I still say “no brandcuffs” out loud probably five times a week. There were a lot of stinkers on CH over the years, but that team also did some of the funniest stuff ever on the web. And 14 years later, “If All Movies Had Cell Phones” still rings in my ears every time I watch somebody who could absolutely solve all their problems with one text message.
Here are a few discounted chargers to make use of iOS 17’s StandBy mode
Apple’s StandBy mode is a convenient feature that gives you a good excuse to buy a MagSafe stand. | Image: Apple
The iPhone 15 and iOS 17 do a whole bunch of new things that many of us here at The Verge enjoy, but one of our favorites is Apple’s StandBy mode. The simple little feature turns your iPhone into a small smart display once you place it on a MagSafe / magnetic Qi stand in landscape orientation. This allows you to see an assortment of full-screen widgets, including a pleasant desk clock, a calendar, or both.
Using the new StandBy mode may involve some menu diving if you want to customize it to your liking (which is definitely part of the fun), but getting started is as simple as turning on the feature and plopping your phone on a charger sideways.
Of course, if you don’t already own a magnetic charging stand for your iPhone, you’ll need to grab one to take advantage of the handy new feature. Luckily, a number of great options are currently discounted, allowing you to pick up a StandBy-compatible stand and achieve those 15W (or 7.5W) charging speeds without spending a fortune.
The best deals on StandBy-ready charging stands
Leading us off, Belkin’s latest BoostCharge Pro 3-in-1 Wireless Charger with MagSafe is on sale direct from Belkin for $129.99 ($20 off) with promo code FALL23. It’s a progressive code that allows you to save more money as you spend above certain tiers, so if you cross the $150 threshold, it will instead save you $40. The real play here is to add an inexpensive accessory like this $7.99 USB-C to USB-A cable and get both for a total of $117.98.
Belkin’s multi-charger — which looks a whole lot like a techy tree — not only charges your iPhone at true 15W MagSafe speeds, but also fast-charges compatible Apple Watch models (including the Series 7, 8, and 9). It can also charge a pair of AirPods or another Qi-enabled device on its base, making it one of the best 3-in-1s you can get for home use.
If you want to spend a little less or don’t need an Apple Watch charger, the 2-in-1 version of Belkin’s charger is also on sale at the manufacturer’s site for $89.99 ($10 off) when you use offer code FALL23. However, just like with the aforementioned 3-in-1 charger, the discount increases if you add an item to your order (like that one-meter cable), allowing you to knock $20 off your total instead of a mere $10.
The Belkin BoostCharge Pro 2-in-1 Wireless Charger with MagSafe is, as it sounds, a smaller version of the triple charger above. It takes up slightly less space, still charges an iPhone at up to 15W, and is StandBy-compatible by mounting the phone to it sideways. Just be aware that the AirPods charging spot is recessed, meaning you can’t charge a second phone down there.
If you want a StandBy-compatible charger that takes up less space on a desk or table and travels well, look no further than the Anker 3-in-1 Cube with MagSafe — which is currently on sale direct from Anker with delayed shipping for $119.96 (around $30 off) when you use promo code ANKER20%OFF at checkout. The Anker Cube is about as small as you can get for a multi-charger that charges a MagSafe iPhone, a pair of earbuds, and an Apple Watch (via an adorable slide-out shelf). The lid tips to display your phone at varying angles, too, and allows for a very compact and low-height StandBy mode experience.
On a tighter budget but still want a multi-charging stand that will work for StandBy mode and charge other devices? Well, if you don’t mind your iPhone charging at slower 7.5W speeds, the ESR HaloLock 3-in-1 Charger Stand for Magsafe is currently selling for $51.99 ($13 off) at Amazon when you click the on-page coupon for 20 percent off.
ESR’s economy-level stand doesn’t support proper MagSafe charging speeds, but its magnetic Qi charging should be adequate for most situations if you don’t need the quickest top-ups. It also charges a pair of AirPods and an Apple Watch, and its niftiest feature is that the Apple Watch pad can be removed and used independently via its USB-C plug.
The best deals on StandBy-ready charging pucks and battery packs
It isn’t just bulky stands that work with iOS 17’s StandBy mode. You can also opt for Belkin’s BoostCharge Pro with MagSafe charging puck and its cute little kickstand, which is currently available from Amazon for $29.99 ($20 off) and from Belkin for $26.99 ($23 off), the latter with promo code CLR10. Not only is this the best charging puck you can buy thanks to its lengthy braided cable and support for 15W charging speeds, but it’s also one of the few that supports StandBy mode given it props your phone up via a built-in kickstand.
And just for good measure, here’s a discounted battery pack you can use with Apple’s StandBy mode. The Anker 622 Magnetic Battery (MagGo) is on sale at Amazon in multiple colors for $39.99 ($30 off) when you click the on-page coupon.
Anker’s MagGo charger may not charge at full MagSafe speeds but it features an unfolding origami-like kickstand that, while small, is strong enough to support a Max-sized iPhone. You can also mount your MagSafe-compatible iPhone to the magnetic Qi battery pack in a horizontal orientation, letting you take full advantage of StandBy mode while your phone is charging via the 5,000mAh battery.
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