Here are the best Apple Watch deals right now
The Apple Watch Series 9 isn’t a massive step up from the prior model, but it does offer a few new features. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
A few months ago, Apple launched its latest batch of smartwatches, introducing the Apple Watch Ultra 2 ($799) alongside the new Apple Watch Series 9 ($399). Each wearable has its own pros and cons, as does the second-gen Apple Watch SE ($249), but the introduction of the new wearables also means there are now more Apple Watch models on the market than ever before — and a lot more deals to be had.
But with all of those options, which one should you pick? Generally speaking, you want to buy the newest watch you can afford so that it continues to receive software updates from Apple. The latest update, watchOS 10, just launched on the Apple Watch Series 4 and newer, though no one can say with certainty whether the Series 4 will get the next big software update or whether it will be exclusive to newer watches.
Picking up a watch from the latest (or a recent) generation ensures you’re getting a smartwatch with an updated design, a robust number of features, and plenty of sensors. Now, let’s get into the deals.
The best Apple Watch Series 9 deals
The Apple Watch Series 9 represents the latest wearable in Apple’s flagship Series lineup. It introduces a slightly faster S9 SiP chip and a second-gen ultra wideband chip, which allow for onboard Siri processing and precision finding with your iPhone. It also offers a brighter, 2,000-nit display and works with Apple’s new “double tap,” a feature that lets you tap your thumb and index finger together to carry out various actions. While the improvements are welcome, the Series 9 isn’t a vast departure from the prior model, the Series 8.
The Apple Watch Series 9 only just arrived, but the GPS-equipped model is already on sale at Amazon, Walmart, and Best Buy in the 41mm sizing for $329 ($70 off) or in the larger 45mm configuration at Amazon, Walmart, and Best Buy for as low as $359 ($70 off). As for the LTE model with cellular connectivity, it’s currently available at Amazon, Walmart, and Best Buy starting at $429 ($70 off), matching its all-time low.
The Apple Watch SE received a refresh in late 2022. It has the same chipset as the Series 8, which is great, but with fewer sensors, no always-on display, and a slightly outdated design compared to the Series 8 and Series 9. Those omissions might take this out of the running for some people, but it still may be exactly what you’re after. Best of all, it starts at $249 for the 40mm Wi-Fi / GPS model, which is $30 less than the previous generation’s baseline cost. Opting for cellular connectivity bumps up the starting price to $299 for the 40mm size (44mm adds $20 to each configuration).
Right now, the 40mm Apple Watch SE with GPS is on sale at Amazon, Walmart, and Best Buy for $199 ($50 off); it’s also available in the 44mm sizing for $229 ($50 off) at Amazon, Walmart, and Best Buy. And if you want the LTE configuration, it’s available at Amazon, Walmart, and Best Buy starting at $249 ($50 off), one of its lowest prices to date.
Apple’s latest Apple Watch Ultra launched at $799 in September with GPS and LTE support, much like the original model. The ultra-capable smartwatch has the most features, sensors, and ruggedness of any Apple Watch model available thus far, along with a display that’s 50 percent brighter than the first Ultra. The 49mm smartwatch also packs Apple’s new S9 SiP and second-gen ultra wideband chips, just like the Apple Watch Series 9, while maintaining long-lasting battery life, precise GPS tracking, and a bevy of diving-friendly sensors.
We recently saw the Apple Watch Ultra 2 dip to $739 for Black Friday. Thankfully, it’s currently on sale for even less at Amazon, where you can grab it starting at just $699 ($100 off) when you clip the on-page coupon. The current promo only applies to the model with an Alpine Loop strap, however, you can also pick up Apple’s latest wearable with either a Trail Loop or an Ocean Band for around $729 ($70 off) using a similar on-page coupon.
While all of the Apple Watch models and colorways covered here are encased in aluminum (except the Ultras, which have a titanium build), Apple does make a more premium range built out of stainless steel and titanium. These offerings are functionally and aesthetically similar to their aluminum counterparts, with slightly refined colors and finishings — polished for the stainless steel and brushed for the titanium. However, they start at much steeper prices of $749 and above. They, too, can often be found on sale, but they’re never discounted as low as the standard base models, so we don’t include them here.
Apple fixed the iPhone’s Flipper Zero problem
Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge
Apple has blocked a Bluetooth attack carried out with the Flipper Zero that sent a barrage of pop-ups to iPhones, causing them to lock up and crash. While Apple hasn’t formally announced the change, it appears the company has rolled out a fix in iOS 17.2, according to tests from ZDNET and 9to5Mac.
The attack, which allowed users to crash nearby iPhones running iOS 17.0, involved the Flipper Zero, a tiny, jack-of-all-trades hacking device. A third-party firmware called Flipper Xtreme included a feature that allowed the Flipper’s built-in Bluetooth radio to blast an overwhelming number of Bluetooth alerts to devices.
Until now, the only way to prevent the attacks was to completely disable Bluetooth on the iPhone, but it looks like Apple has finally addressed the vulnerability. When attempting to lock up an iPhone running iOS 17.2 with the Flipper Zero, both ZDNET and 9to5Mac found that only a few pop-ups appeared on the device. Fortunately, the number of notifications wasn’t enough to cause the device to crash.
We still don’t know exactly what Apple did to make the fix, but The Verge reached out to Apple with a request for more information, and we’ll update this article if we hear back. For now, though, it’s a good idea to update your iPhone to iOS 17.2 if you haven’t already.
Studios are loosening their reluctance to send shows to Netflix. When building their own streaming companies, many entertainment studios ended lucrative licensing deals with Netflix. But they missed the money too much.
Vivo’s X100 Pro offers another massive camera sensor to an international audience
The Vivo X100 Pro in blue. | Image: Vivo
Even in tiny smartphone cameras, lenses matter. Vivo seems to agree since lens improvements are a major emphasis on its new flagship smartphones: the Vivo X100 and Vivo X100 Pro. They launched in China first on November 13th, and now Vivo is releasing them internationally with matching 6.78-inch 120Hz OLED screens.
The X100 will be available in Southeast Asian markets, including India and Indonesia, and the higher-tier X100 Pro will also be available in European markets. And no surprise — the US isn’t getting either of the devices.
Like the X90 Pro before it, the X100 Pro offers a 50-megapixel one-inch-type main camera — a huge sensor by smartphone standards. Vivo says it’s been tuned with “Optical Precision Calibration” for “consistent sharpness and quality.” The X100 Pro’s 50-megapixel telephoto camera also gets a bump up to 4.3x optical magnification versus 2x on the previous model. It comes with a new APO designation, which is Zeiss’ terminology for a lens designed to reduce chromatic aberration. There’s also a floating lens element — which, no, doesn’t literally float — to enable close-up photography with the tele lens.
Image: Vivo
The non-Pro X100, which isn’t coming to Europe.
The X100 has a more pedestrian 50-megapixel 1/1.49-inch-type main camera sensor, as well as a 64-megapixel 3x optical telephoto. There’s no floating element here, but Zeiss coatings have been applied to lenses on both devices. Both phones have 50-megapixel ultrawide cameras as well as a secondary imaging chip, but the X100’s is an older V2 while the Pro gets the newest V3, enabling 4K cinematic portrait video.
The X100 and X100 Pro are both built on MediaTek’s Dimensity 9300 flagship chipset. Most other flagship series put a smaller screen in the “lesser” model. Not so with Vivo — both use that same 6.78-inch OLED panel with a 120Hz refresh rate. They both come with an IP68 rating for dust and water resistance, too. So the primary differences are the camera ones detailed above.
Vivo’s X90 Pro showed a lot of promise when I tested its camera earlier this year against the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra. The company is sticking with the big image sensor strategy, which has certain advantages like better baseline noise performance and more natural bokeh. But at the time, Samsung still came out ahead in most situations with its more-pixels-more-better ethos and savvy computational processing. It’s nice to see Vivo doubling down on lens quality — in my tests, the X90 Pro showed some lens aberrations that spoiled some of my images. In any case, it probably won’t be too long until the X100 Pro and the seemingly imminent Galaxy S24 Ultra meet for a rematch.
Vivo declined to share European pricing information under embargo but said that the X100 Pro will retail for HK$7,998 in Hong Kong, which translates to around €937 or $1,024. The non-Pro X100, meanwhile, will cost HK$5,998 (around $768 / €702).
The Last of Us Multiplayer Video Game Is Scrapped The video game studio Naughty Dog said The Last of Us Online was too resource-intensive to complete without delaying the development of future single-player versions of the game.
Naughty Dog cancels its The Last of Us multiplayer game
Image: Sony
Naughty Dog announced Thursday that it’s canceled the multiplayer game it was building in The Last of Us universe.
The studio says it has been in pre-production on The Last of Us Online even while working on The Last of Us Part II. “We were enthusiastic about the direction in which we were headed,” according to a blog post about the news.
However, “to release and support The Last of Us Online we’d have to put all our studio resources behind supporting post launch content for years to come, severely impacting development on future single-player games,” Naughty Dog says. “So, we had two paths in front of us: become a solely live service games studio or continue to focus on single-player narrative games that have defined Naughty Dog’s heritage.”
Clearly, Naughty Dog is picking the latter path — it also says it has “more than one” big new single-player title in the works.
The Last of Us Online development already seemed to be in some trouble, as Naughty Dog announced a delay to the game in May shortly after Bloomberg reported that Sony was re-evaluating the game’s direction. (In that same delay announcement, Naughty Dog also revealed it was working on a “brand-new single player experience.”) In Kotaku’s October report about Naughty Dog laying off some contractors, the publication said that The Last of Us’ Online was “basically on ice.”
The cancellation of The Last of Us Online adds to Sony’s broader pushback of its live service ambitions. Instead of releasing 12 live service games by March 2026, it now only plans to release six.
Sony and Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us Part II Remastered will be released on January 19th, 2024. The second season of the hit HBO show is set to debut in 2025.
The Tesla Cybertruck’s infamous wiper will reportedly cost $165 to replace
Parker Ortolani / The Verge
The Verge, your source for Tesla Cybertruck windshield wiper news, is unreasonably happy to potentially reveal: a Cybertruck windshield wiper replacement may cost as little as $165 for the entire arm and blade assembly, or $75 for just the wiper blade itself.
The Cybertruck’s entire windshield will also be replaceable, of course, and will cost you a cool $1,900, assuming these prices are accurate and assuming they’re consumer prices rather than internal prices. (I am not sure if that’s a safe assumption, but if so, they seem reasonable for a $60K-and-up vehicle.)
Now Microsoft PowerPoint for the web can add videos with closed captions
Illustration: The Verge
PowerPoint for the web now lets users insert videos with closed captions and subtitles into presentations, reports Windows Central. It should make presentations created in the Microsoft 365 suite more accessible to Deaf people or those hard of hearing, but the feature also offers other benefits.
You can add closed captions in multiple languages, allowing users to connect with audiences worldwide, and captions also make it easier to watch videos in loud environments or quietly without disturbing people around you. It’s also become a feature people expect to see as support for subtitling expands in apps like TikTok, Netflix, Zoom, and more.
To embed a video and insert captions, users must first create closed caption files in the WebVTT format by either using a caption-creation tool or a text editor like Notepad.
After doing so, users can sign into PowerPoint for the web with their Microsoft account and create a new presentation. Upon selecting Video, they then need to click on Insert and choose Insert Video. Once they’ve added the video file, they need to select the captions file by clicking on Video and Insert Captions.
To add captions in multiple languages, you’ll need to insert multiple caption files. You’ll also need to rename the end of the file title to the standard locale, so it looks something like “MyClosedCaptions.en.vtt” for English or “MyClosedCaptions.es.vtt” for Spanish.
Microsoft has increasingly prioritized accessibility, recently calling Windows 11 its most “inclusive version” of the Windows operating system. It highlighted updates that allow users to generate live captions in even more languages and employees to sign in to PCs with just their voices. Meanwhile, in March, Microsoft introduced an “Accessibility Assistant” for Microsoft 365 to let users know when they’re writing inaccessible content, along with 3D-printed attachments and grips for the Surface Pen.
Political Debate Is Rife on TikTok. Politicians? Not So Much. Very few politicians, including the top candidates for president, are on the hugely popular video app — perhaps ceding much of the political discussion to others.
Starlink loses out on $886 million in rural broadband subsidies
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
The FCC announced today that it won’t award Elon Musk’s Starlink an $886 million subsidy from the Universal Service Fund for expanding broadband service in rural areas. The money would have come from the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund program (RDOF), but the FCC writes that Starlink wasn’t able to “demonstrate that it could deliver the promised service” and that giving the subsidy to it wouldn’t be “the best use of limited Universal Service Fund dollars.”
That was the same reason the FCC gave when it rejected Starlink’s bid last year, which led to this appeal. SpaceX had previously won the bidding to roll out 100Mbps download and 20Mbps upload “low-latency internet to 642,925 locations in 35 states,” funded by the RDOF.
“The FCC is tasked with ensuring consumers everywhere have access to high-speed broadband that is reliable and affordable,” FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said. “This applicant had failed to meet its burden to be entitled to nearly $900 million in universal service funds for almost a decade.” FCC commissioner Brendan Carr dissented, writing that “the FCC did not require — and has never required — any other award winner to show that it met its service obligation years ahead of time.”
President Biden has promised more equitable internet access since taking office. But his funding plan was slashed by the time it became law, with the final version offering no money for locally-run internet service.
Christopher Cardaci, head of legal at SpaceX, writes in a letter to the FCC that “Starlink is arguably the only viable option to immediately connect many of the Americans who live and work in the rural and remote areas of the country where high-speed, low-latency internet has been unreliable, unaffordable, or completely unavailable, the very people RDOF was supposed to connect.”
Those who subscribe to Snapchat’s $3.99 plan can use the feature by tapping the “AI” button from the toolbar on the right side of the camera interface. This opens up a window where users can type a text prompt or choose from one of the premade options, like “a futuristic disco” or “a rocket preparing for liftoff.”
Image: Snap
From there, Snapchat’s AI will spit out an image based on the prompt, allowing users to edit it and add a message before sending it off to friends and family on the app. Snapchat is rolling out some other AI-powered perks for subscribers as well, including a way to make the subject of a photo appear farther away from the camera by using AI to fill in the background. Users can try the feature by taking a close-up, pressing the “crop” icon in the camera interface, and selecting “extend.”
Google Loses Antitrust Court Battle With Makers of Fortnite Video Game The ruling could reshape the rules of how other businesses can make money on the Android operating system.
Google is finally saying goodbye to Google Play Movies & TV
Illustration: The Verge
Google is about to fully move on from the Google Play Movies & TV. It had already moved Android and iOS users to the Google TV app, removed the app from every Roku and most smart TVs, and pulled the app from Android TV in October. In a recently published support document, however, Google detailed the ways you’ll be able to watch the shows and movies you’ve bought through Google Play Movies & TV once the brand is gone for good in January.
If you have a TV or streaming device powered by Android TV, you can watch things you’ve purchased or things you want to rent from the Shop tab starting January 17th, according to Google. If you have a cable box or a set-top box that runs Android TV, you’ll watch / rent from the YouTube app starting that same day. And on a browser, YouTube is the place to go, too.
Google has been slowly pushing users away from Google Play Movies & TV for quite awhile, and 9to5Google reports that the Google Play Movies & TV app on Android TV has already started pointing to the Shop tab, so hopefully these changes won’t make for too jarring of a transition. Notably, you’ll still be able to watch the things you’ve purchased even though you’ll be getting the content from a different place, which is better than Sony’s announcement that it will be removing Discovery content that users paid for from their libraries.
Google isn’t the only one consolidating its entertainment apps and platforms. Apple introduced a refreshed TV app that lets you access things like Apple TV Plus as well as buy and rent shows and movies all in one app.
The Nation Magazine to Become Monthly The progressive publication will move to the new schedule in January, and each issue will be 84 pages instead of 48.
What Ails Offshore Wind: Supply Chains, Ships and Interest Rates Government officials and energy developers misjudged the difficulty of building huge clean energy projects in the United States, which has built very few of them.
Be skeptical about QR codes, warns the FTC
Illustration by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) warned the public against scanning any old QR code in a consumer alerts blog last week. Naturally, the warning comes down to security and privacy — bad actors can put QR codes in inconspicuous places or send them via text or email, then just sit back and wait for a payday in the form of money, logins, or other sensitive information.
The New York Times reported that John Fokker, who heads threat intelligence at cybersecurity company Trellix, says Trellix found over “60,000 samples of QR code attacks” in the third quarter this year alone. The Times wrote that the most popular scams involved payroll and HR personnel impersonators and postal scams, among others. Early last year, police in several Texas cities said they’d found fraudulent QR codes placed on parking meters, directing people to a false payment site.
To avoid being victimized by a bad code, the FTC suggests ignoring unexpected emails or other messages you weren’t expecting that come with some sort of urgent request. It’s also good to check the URL that shows up on your screen when scanning to make sure it’s a site you trust. Then again, even a legitimate QR code can show you a garbled and meaningless shortened web address, so if you know what site you want to visit, it’s best to go there directly.
The Commission also recommends the old standby of updating your devices and ensuring you have good, strong passwords and multi-factor authentication in place for sensitive accounts. If you’re unsure how to do that second part, check out our two-factor authentication guide, which has instructions for several of the most popular sites and services.
Beyond the FTC’s recommendation, there are other things you can do. Don’t download a QR code scanning app, for one — built-in camera apps for Android and iOS already do that, and apps can sometimes be made for nefarious purposes themselves. The FBI also has a list of recommendations in a similar blog it published in September, but in general, if you aren’t sure about a code, don’t scan it.
Apple’s iPad plans for next year could be a lot less confusing
Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge
Apple is reportedly making some changes next year that it hopes will make it easier for people to fit a specific iPad to their needs. For instance, Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman wrote in his Power On newsletter today that the next iPad Air will get an M2 chip in addition to the larger second model that’s been rumored.
One of the other ways Apple is reportedly tackling the issue is to drop the 9th-generation model that’s been dangling off of the front of the lineup since last year’s pricier 10th-generation iPad redesign launched. Gurman says sending the 9th-gen iPad out to pasture will let the company “slowly phase out some of its older Pencils.” Presumably, the 2015 Apple Pencil will be the first to go, once there’s no Lightning port iPad to awkwardly plug it into.
Gurman has pegged March for the launch of the new 11-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Air, which would keep Apple’s mid-level on a two-year upgrade cycle. His report today that the Air will get an M2 chip while the Pro models get the M3 nod would firmly put the Air one processor generation behind. But that doesn’t mean the iPad Air will suffer for it, nor that Apple even should give it an M3 chip. Barring any drastic changes in how iPadOS functions that turns iPads into practical laptop replacements for more varied and compute-intensive tasks, the OLED screen that’s rumored for the iPad Pro will be a bigger differentiator for most people than which Apple silicon chip is doing the work.
Gurman also wrote that the new 12.9-inch Air will work with the same Magic Keyboard that’s available today for the iPad Pro. If that’s true, it would make sense if Apple gives the next iPad Air models iPad Pro-like camera arrays. After all, I doubt we’ve phased into an alternate dimension where it wouldn’t drive the company bonkers to see a keyboard case with a big square camera hole on the Air’s single tiny, round camera.
These are good moves for Apple, even if the updates don’t fully sort out the iPad’s awkward situation. Today’s iPads are just too different from one another. Picking based on power needs and hardware features is so much easier if certain other features, like screen size, are the same or at least close enough. But if you really want a big tablet and don’t give a hoot about high refresh rate or high-contrast displays, it’s been annoying that only the iPad Pro offers it — the bigger Air fixes that. Now, if only the company could rectify the iPad accessory situation.
Google finally gives ChatGPT some competition
Image: William Joel / The Verge
Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 17, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. If you’re new here, welcome, so psyched you found us, and also, you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.
I also have for you a new Mastodon app, a bunch of new AI tools, a whole new Fortnite universe, an espresso maker, and much more. And I have some thoughts about messaging. Let’s dig in.
(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What apps are you into right now? What have you read or watched or eaten or played or built recently? Tell me everything: installer@theverge.com. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer, forward it to them and tell them to subscribe here.)
The Drop
Google Gemini. Talking to Google CEO Sundar Pichai this week, I got the distinct sense that he sees the new Gemini model as the moment Google starts to win the AI war. Is he right? Who knows! Gemini certainly has its issues. But you can play with it now in Bard and on the Pixel 8 Pro, and it’s coming to Google products everywhere really soon.
TheArtificialpodcast series. I think every reporter I know is currently digging into the history of OpenAI, trying to figure out how this weirdly structured organization came to be the biggest thing in artificial intelligence. This episode of The Journal (the first in a four-part series, I think) is the clearest origin story I’ve heard so far.
Mammoth 2. I’ve used a lot of Mastodon apps, and this is my new favorite. Mammoth is nice-looking and fast but also really devoted to helping you find good people and posts on the platform. It’s only for Apple devices, which is a bummer, but it’s a really nice app.
Resident Evil 4’s VR Mode. You could argue that Resident Evil games have been the best thing in VR for a long time. Now, PSVR users are getting a pretty full VR version of Resident Evil 4, which is one of the best games in the series and was remade as one of the best games of the year. I might need to buy a PSVR for this.
Lego Fortnite. I played a lot of OG Fortnite recently and actually loved the game minus all the tie-ins and branded stuff. But this is something else: a massive new island and almost an entirely new game within Fortnite. I’ve only played it a bit, but it’s very cool.
Digital Foundry’sGrand Theft Auto VItrailer breakdown. Have you watched the GTA VI trailer yet? Statistically speaking, I think everyone on earth already has. And if you’re as excited about it as I am, you’ll love this 37-minute, absurdly deep exegesis of practically every frame and pixel we’ve seen so far.
Disney Plus with Hulu. Disney’s combined streaming service is now in beta testing, which means you might start to see a Hulu tab inside of your Disney app. Fast Company has a fun story on all the unexpected challenges of shoving two services together like this, but ultimately, it looks pretty simple. Hulu is a channel; Disney Plus is the cable bundle. That’s where we’re headed.
Visual Electric. A new and clever riff on AI image generation — this one gives you all kinds of dynamic control, so instead of prompting and re-prompting, you can tweak your images almost as if you’re in Photoshop. It also has auto-complete suggestions as you type, which has led me down some deeply weird rabbit holes.
Screen share
I’ve known Dan Seifert a long time, and I can’t remember a time when he has only had one phone. This is partly an occupational hazard: Dan runs The Verge’s reviews team, so his home seems to frequently resemble a terrifying cross between a Best Buy and a FedEx warehouse. But Dan’s also just a multiple-device kind of guy, because the other thing I can’t remember is when there was one device that did everything he needed.
I asked Dan to share his homescreen with us, slightly terrified of how many screenshots I might get back. (Dan’s also a “download all the apps in the app store” kind of guy, just like me.) Somewhat miraculously, he only sent me two. Well, three, depending on how you count a foldable.
Here are Dan’s homescreens, plus some info on the apps he uses and why:
The phone: Apple iPhone 15 Pro.
The wallpaper: This changes depending on my Focus mode, but my current Work Focus has the Apple Astronomy wallpaper for Jupiter, which looks cool and was my favorite planet as a kid. Everyone had a favorite planet as a kid, right?
The apps: I love useful widgets, so I always have a large one taking up a good chunk of my screen. It’s a widget stack, so I can flick through things like my calendar, to-do list, Siri Suggestions, and weather. This is the homescreen I use for my Work Focus mode, so a lot of the time, the stack is showing Fantastical, which I love because it blends both calendar appointments and to-dos from my Todoist list in one view, while giving me a quick date and month calendar overview. Below that are Slack, Reeder for RSS, Artifact, and Apple News, the latter three of which I use to keep up with news throughout the day.
You’ll see that I have two to-do list apps here because, for a while, I was trying to see if I could make Apple Reminders work for me. I can’t, and I always fall back on Todoist, my one true to-do list app love. I should probably remove Reminders at this point, but I haven’t figured out another app to put there yet, and I like the symmetry of two full app rows. My home row is super boring, but Outlook remains the best email app on the iPhone, fight me.
Dan Seifert’s Fold homescreen. Widgets for days!
The phone: Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5.
The wallpaper: Something I found in the Backdrops app, the best wallpaper app for Android, that I thought looked cool. I don’t really get to see it all that often, though, because I crap my homescreen up with so much stuff, but oh well.
The apps: The Fold 5 lets me set different layouts for its inner and outer screens, and you bet your ass I take advantage of that. The outer screen is optimized for stuff I access most often while on the go, and once again, widgets and widget stacks play a big role here. The top widget stack has: calendar, to-do list, battery, Samsung’s version of Siri Suggestions (which works about as well as Apple’s version, read into that however you’d like), and the Alexa shopping list we use for groceries.
Below that is another widget stack with media widgets for Pocket Casts, Apple Music, Sonos, and my Galaxy Buds 2 Pro controls. Then a third widget below that is for the Samsung Weather app, which has a handy insights thing that came in the One UI 6 / Android 14 update. I’ve got some folders for music apps, smart home controls, and news apps like Artifact and Google News. FocusReader is my RSS app of choice on Android that I plug my Feedly account into, and I obsessively check the Play Store for app updates throughout the day, so there’s a shortcut to take me right to it next to the weather widget. Then there’s the ubiquitous Google Search widget that can now launch apps — so that’s mostly what I use it for — and my kind of boring home row with a folder for multiple messaging apps since Beeper Mini came out. Outlook is the best email app on Android, and Samsung Internet is the best browser on Android, fight me twice.
The inner screen is optimized for the things I do on a bigger screen, so there are a lot more apps and folders. I’ve got a books folder and a read-later folder for all the reading apps I use on my Fold, which is one of the primary things I do with it, plus social media time wasters like Megalodon for Mastodon, Threads, and Instagram. The calendar widget is a stack, of course, and I’m experimenting with the big battery widget, which is more useful when I have my earbuds connected and can see their status in it, too. Home row is boring again, but I took the phone app out of it because I don’t really take calls with the Fold open.
I also asked Dan to share a few things he’s into right now, other than constantly maintaining thousands of phones and widget stacks. Here’s what he shared:
I’ve been reading theSilotrilogy of books about a decade late, and I’m about a third of the way through the last one, Dust. I loved the show on Apple TV Plus earlier this year, and I’ve been really enjoying the books, which have similar vibes, even if the story doesn’t line up 1:1 with the show.
There’s finally a new season ofFargo airing now, and I love it. I’m extremely here for the Jon Hamm-aissance this year; he was great in the most recent season of The Morning Show, too.
I stuck a MagSafe ring sticker to the back of my Z Fold 5 a few weeks ago, and it opened up a whole world of fun accessories I can share between my iPhone and it. Grips, kickstands, chargers, and batteries all work great, but my favorite is the hack I did by gluing a second MagSafe ring to the sleeve for an S Pen, and now I have a detachable S Pen holder without a bulky case.
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.
“I was just introduced to the Canadian ‘board game’ Crokinole, and it’s pretty rad. The boards are the size of a small table.” – Tom
“Throwback to an earlier Installer that brought up Omnivore as a read-it-later service. I have since moved all of my newsletters (including Installer) over to Omnivore and out of my standard email inbox. Having newsletters in a dedicated reader app not only cleans up my email but also is a much better format — and it has high-quality AI text-to-speech to read them to me.” – Nicholas
“Godzilla Minus One was fantastic and deserves attention from those that haven’t been traditionally interested in kaiju movies.” – Luke
“Scott Pilgrim Takes Off is an alternative story to the original comics. The cast from its movie adaptation is back. Combine that with the anime-like animation, and you have the perfect binge-watch for the weekend.” – Bahadir
“TheVergecast reminded me that this little device has connected my Nest devices to Apple HomeKit for over three years without breaking once. I forgot I even used it in my setup.” – Chris
“Informed. It’s a kinda new news app. Looks super clean. Articles don’t refresh as often as I’d like. Still rocking with it though.” – Omar
“Using DuckDuckGo / Firefox Relay to remove trackers from emails and clean up links. Useful for newsletters or shopping websites.” – Lucens
“Been loving the espresso I’ve been making this week with my new Wacaco Picopresso.” – James
“I’d like to recommend NowPlaying. This app is the most beautiful way to detect fun details about any song, album, or artist.” – Hidde
Signing off
I’m writing to you this week from Las Vegas, where one of the year’s great sporting events is taking place. No, not that one. Not that one, either. Yes! It’s the Excel World Championships! There’s a huge community of exceptional Excel users out there, and they get together periodically to use spreadsheets to solve puzzles. It’s growing fast and is a surprisingly fun spectator sport — it even went kind of viral after showing up on ESPN last year.
If you’re reading this on Saturday, you can watch the finals live tonight on YouTube (look for me in the crowd!). If you’re not seeing this until Sunday, head over to the Financial Modeling World Cup’s YouTube page, and you can see all the competitions from this year. It’s nerdy, it’s thrilling, and I love it so much. If only I knew what a VLOOKUP was, I’d be unstoppable.
This A.I. Subculture’s Motto: Go, Go, Go The eccentric pro-tech movement known as “Effective Accelerationism” wants to unshackle powerful A.I., and party along the way.
Apple responds to the Beeper iMessage saga: ‘We took steps to protect our users’
Beeper Mini brought iMessage to Android. It didn’t last long. | Image: Beeper
A few days after the team at Beeper proudly announced a way for users to send blue-bubble iMessages directly from their Android devices without any weird relay servers, and about 24 hours after it became clear Apple had taken steps to shut that down, Apple has shared its take on the issue.
The company’s stance here is fairly predictable: it says it’s simply trying to do right by users, and protect the privacy and security of their iMessages. “We took steps to protect our users by blocking techniques that exploit fake credentials in order to gain access to iMessage,” Apple senior PR manager Nadine Haija said in a statement.
Here’s the statement in full:
At Apple, we build our products and services with industry-leading privacy and security technologies designed to give users control of their data and keep personal information safe. We took steps to protect our users by blocking techniques that exploit fake credentials in order to gain access to iMessage. These techniques posed significant risks to user security and privacy, including the potential for metadata exposure and enabling unwanted messages, spam, and phishing attacks. We will continue to make updates in the future to protect our users.
This statement suggests a few things. First, that Apple did in fact shut down Beeper Mini, which uses a custom-built service to connect to iMessage through Apple’s own push notification service — all iMessage messages travel over this protocol, which Beeper effectively intercepts and delivers to your device. To do so, Beeper had to convince Apple’s servers that it was pinging the notification protocols from a genuine Apple device, when it obviously wasn’t. (These are the “fake credentials” Apple is talking about. Quinn Nelson at Snazzy Labs made a good video about how it all works.)
Beeper says its process works with no compromise to your encryption or privacy; the company’s documentation says that no one can read the contents of your messages other than you. But Apple can’t verify that, and says it poses risks for users and the people they chat with.
Obviously there’s also a much bigger picture here, though. Apple has repeatedly made clear that it doesn’t want to bring iMessage to Android: “buy your mom an iPhone,” CEO Tim Cook told a questioner at the Code Conference who wanted a better way to message their Android-toting mother, and the company’s executives have debated Android versions in the past but decided it would cannibalize iPhone sales. Apple has recently said it will adopt the cross-platform RCS messaging protocol, but we don’t yet know exactly what that will look like — and you can bet that Apple will still seek to make life better for native iMessage users.
Apple’s statement comes at an interesting time. Beeper has been around for a couple of years, and its previous efforts to intercept iMessage were actually far more problematic, security-wise. Beeper and apps like Sunbird (which recently worked with Nothing on another way to bring iMessage to Android) were simply running your iMessage traffic through a Mac Mini in a server rack somewhere, which left your messages much more vulnerable. But Beeper Mini was exploiting the iMessage protocol directly, which clearly prompted Apple to tighten its security measures.
Since Apple cut off Beeper Mini, Beeper has been working feverishly to get it up and running again. On Saturday, the company said iMessage was working again in the original Beeper Cloud app, but Beeper Mini was still not functioning. Founder Eric Migicovsky said on Friday that he simply didn’t understand why Apple would block his app: “if Apple truly cares about the privacy and security of their own iPhone users, why would they stop a service that enables their own users to now send encrypted messages to Android users, rather than using unsecure SMS?”
Migicovsky says now that his stance hasn’t changed, even after hearing Apple’s statement. He says he’d be happy to share Beeper’s code with Apple for a security review, so that it could be sure of Beeper’s security practices. Then he stops himself. “But I reject that entire premise! Because the position we’re starting from is that iPhone users can’t talk to Android users except through unencrypted messages.”
Beeper’s argument is that SMS is so fundamentally insecure that practically anything else would be an improvement. When I say that maybe Apple’s concern is that iPhone users are suddenly sending their supposedly Apple-only blue-bubble messages via a company — Beeper — they don’t know about, Migicovsky thinks about it for a second. “That’s fair,” he says, and offers a solution: maybe every message sent through Beeper should be prefaced with a pager emoji, so people know what’s what. If that’ll fix the problem, he says, it could be done in a few hours.
When I ask Migicovsky if he’s prepared to do battle with Apple’s security team for the foreseeable future, he says that the fact that Beeper Cloud is still working is a signal that Apple can’t or won’t keep it out forever. (He also says Beeper’s team has some ideas left for Beeper Mini.) Beyond that, he hopes the court of public opinion will eventually convince Apple to play nice anyway. “What we’ve built is good for the world,” he says. “It’s something we can almost all agree should exist.”
Within Apple, at least this argument seems likely to fall on deaf ears. The company has kept iMessage tightly controlled and carefully secured for years, and isn’t likely to loosen the reins now. And if Beeper does ever get Beeper Mini working again, it’s destined for a never-ending game of cat and mouse trying to stay one step ahead of Apple’s security. And Apple has made clear it intends to win that game, no matter how badly you want to send iMessages from an Android phone.
Update December 9th, 8:30PM: Added comment from Beeper’s Eric Migicovsky.
Inside OpenAI’s Crisis Over the Future of Artificial Intelligence Split over the leadership of Sam Altman, board members and executives turned on one another. Their brawl exposed the cracks at the heart of the A.I. movement.
Microsoft’s Edge Copilot AI can’t really summarize every YouTube video
Image: The Verge
One feature added to Microsoft’s AI Copilot in the Edge browser this week is the ability to generate text summaries of videos. But Edge Copilot’s time-saving feature is still fairly limited and only works on pre-processed videos or those with subtitles, as Mikhail Parakhin, Microsoft’s CEO of advertising and web services, explained.
As spotted by MSPowerUser, Parakhin writes, “In order for it to work, we need to pre-process the video. If the video has subtitles - we can always fallback on that, if it does not and we didn’t preprocess it yet - then it won’t work,” in response to a question.
In order for it to work, we need to pre-process the video. If the video has subtitles - we can always fallback on that, if it does not and we didn't preprocess it yet - then it won't work.
In other words, on its own Edge Copilot doesn’t so much summarize videos as it summarizes the text transcripts of the videos. Copilot can also perform a similar function throughout Microsoft 365, including summarizing Teams video meetings and calls for customer service agents — and in both cases, the audio needs to be transcribed first by Microsoft. Copilot on Microsoft Stream can also summarize any video, but again, it requires users to generate a written transcript.
Microsoft
The conversation started after designer Pietro Schirano posted a screen recording of Edge Copilot summarizing a YouTube video about the GTA VI trailer. In this case, Copilot appeared to be doing its job perfectly. The user in the recording presses the “Generate video summary” button in the Copilot sidebar, and mere seconds later, Copilot churns one out, complete with highlights and timestamps.
Of course, many platforms, including YouTube and Vimeo, can automatically generate transcripts and subtitles — if users enable the feature. After The Verge asked Parakhin on X if we could assume most publicly available videos (i.e. YouTube) weren’t pre-processed, he replied: “Should work for most videos.”
Copilot is just the latest example of the generative AI race Microsoft is competing in with Google (and others). Last month, Google upgraded the YouTube extension for its Bard chatbot to enable it to summarize the content of a video and surface specific information from it. Just this week, Google announced a major Gemini update that has its own issues — the company’s editing may have misrepresented some of the AI’s capabilities in a demo, and it doesn’t always have its facts straight.
Parakhin has been candid about the various stages of Copilot’s evolution on social media. While on a plane on Tuesday morning, the machine learning expert posted on X: “Adding ability for Edge Copilot to use information in videos - on a flight.”
EU reaches provisional agreement on AI Act, paving way for landmark law
The earliest that we will likely see these rules come into force is 2025. | The Verge
Following a round of intense negotiations this week, lawmakers in Brussels have now reached a “provisional agreement” on the European Union’s proposed Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act). The EU’s AI Act is anticipated to be the world’s first comprehensive set of rules to govern AI and could serve as a benchmark for other regions looking to pass similar laws.
According to the press release, negotiators established obligations for “high-impact” general-purpose AI (GPAI) systems that meet certain benchmarks, like risk assessments, adversarial testing, incident reports, and more. It also mandates transparency by those systems that include creating technical documents and “detailed summaries about the content used for training” — something companies like ChatGPT maker OpenAI have refused to do so far.
Another element is that citizens should have a right to launch complaints about AI systems and receive explanations about decisions on “high-risk” systems that impact their rights.
The press release didn’t go into detail about how all that would work or what the benchmarks are, but it did note a framework for fines if companies break the rules. They vary based on the violation and size of the company and can range from 35 million euros or 7 percent of global revenue, to 7.5 million euros or 1.5 percent of global revenue of turnover.
There are a number of applications where the use of AI is banned, like scraping facial images from CCTV footage, categorization based on “sensitive characteristics” like race, sexual orientation, religion, or political beliefs, emotion recognition at work or school, or the creation of “social scoring” systems. The last two banned bullet points are AI systems that “manipulate human behavior to circumvent their free will” or “exploit the vulnerabilities of people.” The rules also include a list of safeguards and exemptions for law enforcement use of biometric systems, either in real-time or to search for evidence in recordings.
It’s expected that a final deal will be reached before the end of the year. Even then, the law likely won’t come into force until 2025 at the earliest.
The first draft of the EU’s AI Act was unveiled in 2021, seeking to distinguish what actually counts as AI, and synchronize the rules for regulating AI technology across EU member states. That draft predated the introduction of fast-changing generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion, however, prompting numerous revisions to the legislation.
Now that a provisional agreement has been reached, more negotiations will still be required, including votes by Parliament’s Internal Market and Civil Liberties committees.
Apple has seemingly found a way to block Android’s new iMessage app
Illustration: The Verge
It appears that Beeper Mini, an easy iMessage solution for Android, was simply too good to be true — or a short-lived dream, at least. On Friday, less than a week after its launch, the app started experiencing technical issues when users were suddenly unable to send and receive blue bubble messages. The problems grew worse over the course of the day, with reports piling up on the Beeper subreddit. Several people at The Verge were unable to activate their Android phone numbers with Beeper Mini as of Friday afternoon, a clear indication that Apple has plugged up whatever holes allowed the app to operate to begin with.
Beeper Mini was the result of a comprehensive attempt to reverse engineer Apple’s messaging protocol. A 16-year-old high school student managed to successfully pull it off, and for a while, everything worked without a hitch. That effort became the basis for the new app, which requires a $2 / month subscription. Here’s what my colleague Jake wrote days ago:
Its developers figured out how to register a phone number with iMessage, send messages directly to Apple’s servers, and have messages sent back to your phone natively inside the app. It was a tricky process that involved deconstructing Apple’s messaging pipeline from start to finish. Beeper’s team had to figure out where to send the messages, what the messages needed to look like, and how to pull them back down from the cloud. The hardest part, Migicovsky said, was cracking what is essentially Apple’s padlock on the whole system: a check to see whether the connected device is a genuine Apple product.
Quinn Nelson, of Snazzy Labs, also made an excellent video that covers the technical details. The belief — or I suppose the hope — among Beeper’s developers and users was that it would be such an ordeal for Apple to block the Android app that doing so wouldn’t be worth the hassle. Apparently, it was easier than anyone expected.
This throws a huge wrench into Beeper’s plans; the company was hoping to evolve Beeper Mini into an all-in-one messaging app that would eventually wrap in RCS and SMS.
Reached for comment, Beeper CEO Eric Migicovsky did not deny that Apple has successfully blocked Beeper Mini. “If it’s Apple, then I think the biggest question is... if Apple truly cares about the privacy and security of their own iPhone users, why would they stop a service that enables their own users to now send encrypted messages to Android users, rather than using unsecure SMS? With their announcement of RCS support, it’s clear that Apple knows they have a gaping hole here. Beeper Mini is here today and works great. Why force iPhone users back to sending unencrypted SMS when they chat with friends on Android?”
Previous attempts to get iMessage working on Android — like Beeper’s original app — have involved complex systems with remote Macs logged into a user’s Apple ID. Nothing, the startup from OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei, recently sought to bring iMessage to its latest phone, but that plan was quickly derailed by security and privacy concerns. The Beeper Mini approach, which actually communicated with Apple’s own servers, was the most impressive try yet. But unless the company can somehow get around Apple’s blockade, it’ll go down as a very fleeting one.
The Game Awards 2023: the biggest news, trailers, and announcements
Image: The Game Awards
Geoff Keighley’s annual celebration of video games is back.
It’s early December, and that means it’s time for The Game Awards, the annual Geoff Keighley-hosted video game news and awards extravaganza. Yes, one title will be crowned the game of the year (personally, my pick is Tears of the Kingdom or Alan Wake 2), but we can also look forward to tons of game announcements and trailers previewing what’s next for the video game industry in 2024 and beyond.
There’s often major news at the show. In 2019, Microsoft surprise-announced the Xbox Series X. Last year, the show had reveals like Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon, the Horizon Forbidden West expansion, Hades II, and Death Stranding 2. And there’s likely to be a story or two about something unexpected, like 2022’s flute guy and the stage crasher.
The Game Awards 2023 kicks off on December 7th at 7:30PM ET, and you can watch it on YouTube, Twitch, and more.
Spotify’s CFO is out days after mass layoffs
Image: The Verge
Of all the layoffs happening at Spotify this week, this has to be the biggest. Chief financial officer Paul Vogel, who since 2020 has managed the company’s balance sheet as it expanded into podcasting and audiobooks, is leaving the company at the end of March 2024.
Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said the decision was made because Vogel didn’t have the experience needed to help the company both expand and meet market expectations. The company is starting the search for a successor.
“Spotify has embarked on an evolution over the last two years to bring our spending more in line with market expectations while also funding the significant growth opportunities we continue to identify. I’ve talked a lot with Paul about the need to balance these two objectives carefully. Over time, we’ve come to the conclusion that Spotify is entering a new phase and needs a CFO with a different mix of experiences. As a result, we’ve decided to part ways, but I am very appreciative of the steady hand Paul has provided in supporting the expansion of our business through a global pandemic and unprecedented economic uncertainty,” Ek said in a statement published Thursday evening. Vogel did not issue a statement.
After testing investors’ patience with acquisitions and investments, Spotify is focusing on producing a profit, for better or worse. Much of its original podcasting operation has shuttered, including the cancellation this week of its two most prestigious shows, Heavyweight and Stolen. Approximately 1,500 people this week were laid off from product, advertising, marketing, and content, amounting to 17 percent of its staff.
Vogel is a longtime Spotify employee, joining the company in 2016 as the head of FP&A, treasury, and investor relations before being promoted to CFO in 2020. Prior to that, he had been a managing director at Barclay’s and an SVP at AllianceBernstein.
Before the news broke on Thursday, an SEC filing was posted that showed Vogel exercised 47,859 stock options on Tuesday and sold those shares at one of the highest prices Spotify has seen in two years. The sale was worth $9.38 million. Vogel had exercised options and sold stock in March and September, but this sale was significantly larger than the other two. It is possible the stock sale was previously scheduled or triggered by a stock price. Spotify did not return request for clarification on the stock sales.
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