Google cancels contract with an AI data firm that’s helped train Bard
Image: Google
Google ended its contract with Appen, an Australian data company involved in training its large language model AI tools used in Bard, Search, and other products, even as the competition to develop generative AI tools increases. “Our decision to end the contract was made as part of our ongoing effort to evaluate and adjust many of our supplier partnerships across Alphabet to ensure our vendor operations are as efficient as possible,” Google spokesperson Courtenay Mencini said in a statement sent to The Verge.
Appen notified the Australian Securities Exchange in a filing, saying it “had no prior knowledge of Google’s decision to terminate the contract.”
Human workers at companies like Appen often handle many of the more distasteful parts of training AI and are often the lower-paid, often ignored backbone of the entire industry. At Appen, contractors help rate data quality and answers from AI models. Fast Company wrote last year that some Appen employees who are members of the Alphabet Workers Union had been petitioning Appen to increase wages from $10 an hour to $15. While the union won wage increases, the final number fell short of its goal. Many of these workers were then laid off, with Appen citing business conditions.
CNBC reported that Appen has also helped train AI models for Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon. The company said in its ASX filing that its work with Google has had a significant impact on its revenue. Appen’s revenue from Google alone in the fiscal year 2023 amounted to $82.8 million. It made $273 million last year.
Mencini added that Google is working closely with Appen to make the transition “as smooth as possible.”
Employees at another Google contractor, Accenture, overwhelmingly voted to join the Alphabet Workers Union — which represents Google contractors — after refusing to handle “obscene, graphic, and offensive prompts” for the then-unreleased Bard chatbot in November last year.
And it isn’t just an issue for Google. Content moderators working in Kenya for data-labeling firm Sama sued the company and its client Meta for paying people $2.20 an hour to view disturbing images and videos.
Here’s more proof ADT is about to launch a new smart home security system
ADT has a new smart home security on the works that looks like it will launch next month. | Screenshot: Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge
All signs are pointing to an imminent launch of ADT’s new Smart Home Security System, a DIY security system born of a collaboration between Google and ADT. This could be a better home security option for those of us who loved and lost the excellent but expensive Google Nest Secure system, which Google is sunsetting for good on April 8th, 2024.
However, shortly after the article was published, the pages on ADT’s site disappeared, and we've heard nothing official from ADT about the new system since.
Screenshot by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge
A screenshot of the ADT YouTube video that has since been made private.
This week, the company posted a short setup video to its YouTube page explaining how to set up your new ADT Base, which is “the heart of the ADT Smart Home Security system,” according to the video.
A Verge reader tipped us to the video and also said an ADT rep told him it would be available to buy in February. We’ve contacted ADT for confirmation but had not heard back by the time of publication. However, the YouTube video has since been made private.
The video didn’t provide any more details about the new system, but it did contain images of all the products we reported on, including the backlit keypad on the base station and images of the door and window sensor that look a lot like the excellent Nest Detect sensors.
The new system includes a central base station, door and window sensors and motion sensors that appear to be nicer than the more basic hardware for which ADT is known. That’s alongside devices such as leak and smoke detectors.
The leaked pages indicated the system could be self or professionally monitored and would work with Z-Wave products to round out the smart home offerings. Products could include lights, locks, and thermostats, and the system could integrate with Google Nest cameras, doorbells, thermostats, Wi-Fi products, smart speakers, and smart displays.
ADT is known for its professional installation and monitoring services. In early 2020, it launched a DIY smart home security solution with ADT Blue but, following the investment from Google, quietly shut the service down and announced that Google Nest products would become the cornerstone of its smart home offerings.
Today, ADT offers Google Nest products with all its security solutions, including ADT's second attempt at the DIY space — ADT Self Setup. This was the option Google offered to its Google Nest Secure customers, but it’s a more basic system that lacks the innovative features the Nest Secure platform offered. And according to several Reddit posts, it doesn't integrate as well with Google’s products, leaving Google Nest users searching for better alternatives.
The ADT offer for Google Nest Secure customers goes through May 7th, 2024. So, if you’ve been hanging on to your voucher, it might be worth waiting a few more weeks to see if this new system materializes, if it’s any good, and if ADT will offer it to former Nest Secure users.
LG’s new 32-inch 4K smart monitor has Netflix and Google Calendar built in
LG’s MyView smart monitor | LG Electronics
You can now purchase the entire slate of LG’s webOS-powered MyView monitors, which debuted at CES earlier this month, including one with a 31.5-inch 4K IPS panel (model 32SR85U) that starts at $599.99. Sure, gamers can find better value for their money than a monitor that maxes out with 5ms response times and a 60Hz refresh rate, but visual creatives might appreciate a 95 percent DCI-P3 color gamut. And when your office work is done, you can fire up a full suite of entertainment apps or stream directly from another device with AirPlay 2 and Miracast support.
It could be an ideal monitor for movie watching at your desk without loud fans (or Slack notifications) ruining the immersion, and it’s easier to fit into your home office than Samsung’s Ark.
Image: LG Electronics
The webOS app support does enable work, too, with Microsoft 365 and Google Calendar integration, plus video calling with a detachable 1080p webcam. There’s a voice-activated Magic Remote to navigate the user interface, in addition to a mouse and keyboard.
It’s sleek, with thin bezels on three sides, while the display sits on a removable height- and tilt-adjustable stand. It’s equipped with three USB-C Power Delivery ports that deliver up to 90W, has WiFi and Bluetooth for wireless connectivity, two HDMI ports, and 5W stereo speakers.
Exactly how much money can you make by uploading a video to X? The going assumption has been that X — like Twitter before it — is a poor platform for video creators that can’t compete with YouTube and TikTok in terms of monetization and reach. So there’s been a lot riding on the results of a recent test by MrBeast, who aimed to see whether he could actually make money on Elon Musk’s platform.
Last week, MrBeast, real name Jimmy Donaldson, posted a video to Musk’s platform with the explicit goal of seeing “how much ad revenue a video on X would make.” Musk had previously encouraged MrBeast to post to X, and he sent out an excited message shortly after the test went up. “First MrBeast video posted directly on !” Musk wrote. Now, a week later, Donaldson has shared data on how his first video performed: it made around $260,000 across more than 150 million views.
On the surface, the results sound promising. That same video has been up for four months on YouTube, and it’s only notched 215 million views over there. That revenue also compares favorably to a recent YouTube video that MrBeast shared analytics for — that one made $167,000 over a five-day period with 99 million views. So it’s at least plausible that X can keep pace with YouTube.
MY FIRST X VIDEO MADE OVER $250,000!
But it’s a bit of a facade. Advertisers saw the attention it was getting and bought ads on my video (I think) and thus my revenue per view is prob higher than what you’d experience pic.twitter.com/nViVpZbWBb
But Donaldson was quick to note that his performance on X comes with some real caveats. “It’s a bit of a facade,” he wrote. For one, he has the advantage of being MrBeast, and there was increased attention on this video given that it was his first on the platform. Advertisers bought ads to run specifically on his video, earning him a higher rate. Shopify’s president, Harley Finkelstein, bragged shortly after the video went up that his company was “the first commerce brand to partner in the ad pre-roll” for MrBeast.
That suggests a typical video from another creator won’t earn as much. “Advertisers saw the attention it was getting and bought ads on my video (I think) and thus my revenue per view is prob higher than what you’d experience,” Donaldson wrote.
There are other reasons to think MrBeast’s test video did better than a typical upload would. Multiplereportshave indicated that X was quietly boosting MrBeast’s video to viewers, artificially inflating the view count. Musk has denied that this happened, but there’s enough evidence to suggest that someone was putting the post in front of more eyes than it naturally would have achieved. MrBeast’s entire account was getting an artificial boost from X, too, as of last year.
My videos cost millions to make and even if they got a billion views on X it wouldn’t fund a fraction of it :/
I’m down though to test stuff once monetization is really cranking!
X’s view count doesn’t seem to be a particularly reliable metric of performance, either. Musk didn’t respond to a question from Donaldson on how much of a video needs to be watched for it to be counted as a view, meaning it’s possible that every flicker of the video across a user’s feed helps add to that 150 million view count. YouTube is quick to count playback as a view, too, but it’s generally understood that there needs to be at least some amount of actual viewership. Ads, for example, require a full 30 seconds of watch time to be counted.
Of course, MrBeast was always going to make far more money from a video and have far higher viewership than the typical user. But all signs point toward his performance on X struggling to keep pace with one of his poorer performances on YouTube. Donaldson previously wrote to Musk, “My videos cost millions to make and even if they got a billion views on X it wouldn’t fund a fraction of it.” As of this writing, there are no longer preroll ads playing on the test video, so it seems like Donaldson’s prediction was right — even if X’s ad revenue were high enough, the platform doesn’t even seem to have enough available ads to run on the video for him to keep making money.
Donaldson didn’t indicate one way or the other as to whether he’ll continue to post videos to X, but it’s very clear that Musk is hoping he will. Among Musk’s many, many new business pillars for X is transforming it into a robust creator platform and a rival to YouTube. If YouTube’s biggest star doesn’t think his platform is worth the time, it’s going to be hard to convince anyone else to bother.
How to cut, copy, and paste on Android phones
Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge
Cutting, copying, and pasting are actions that are regularly performed in apps and between apps: getting an address from a message into a map, moving an image from an email to a document, or just transferring text from one end of a note to another. But while I’ve known how to cut, copy, and paste on a laptop or desktop computer for, well, forever, I wasn’t quite as sure at first how to do it on my Android phone.
In fact, cutting, copying, sharing, or pasting on Android is pretty straightforward — no matter which app you’re in or what you’re trying to move around. Here’s how to do it.
Note: I’ve tested these techniques on a Google Pixel 8 running Android 14 and a Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5 running Android 14 and One UI 6.0.
Selecting, copying, and sharing text
When you highlight a section of text, a small bar of options will pop up above your selection.
When you copy or cut text, you’ll see it above your Gboard keyboard.
The process for selecting text on the screen, whether it’s editable text (as in a form) or non-editable text (like on a webpage), is the same in most scenarios:
Press and hold on a word until it’s selected.
Drag the handles at each end of the selection if you want to include more words.
Tap Select all on the pop-up bar above the selection to select all the text in the section.
In some apps (such as Google Keep), you can also double-tap on a word to select it, rather than tapping and holding. You might find this easier if the app you’re using supports it. (Gmail, for example, does not.)
However you do it, once you select your text, you’ll get a list of options that appear above the selection.
Tap Copy to copy the text to the keyboard, leaving the original text in place.
Tap Cut to move the text to the clipboard, removing the original text. (You can only do this in a field or form where text is editable.)
Android actually has a neat trick where if there’s text on the clipboard when you pull up the on-screen keyboard, you’ll see that text ready to paste just above the keys — just tap the text to paste it at the current cursor position. (This works on Google’s default Gboard keyboard, the Samsung Keyboard, and it might work on other keyboard apps as well.)
To paste the text, press and hold your finger on the spot you want to drop the text in, then choose Paste from the pop-up menu when it appears.
Tap Share to send the text directly into another app — for example, to copy an address from a website and paste it into a message to someone on WhatsApp.
There is another option if you’re moving text within a document: with the text selected, long-press somewhere in the selection, then drag it to its new location. This works in the same way as going via the clipboard and the Cut and Paste options.
You will notice some variations in different apps — for example, in Chrome, where if you press on the current site URL, you’ll get a copy icon that you can select, not a pop-up bar. In general, though, use a long press to select and copy and a long press to paste.
Selecting, copying, and pasting images
Image copying is simple in Chrome — just press and hold to get a pop-up menu.
In Google Photos, there’s no copy option; you have to share the photo.
Working with images is a lot more dependent on the app you’re using, in my experience, but a long press is a good place to start. In Google Chrome, for example, press and hold on an image, and you’ll see a pop-up dialog with a Copy image option on it.
It’s not quite this simple in every other app. If you’re looking at an image in Google Keep, you need to tap on it to make it full screen, then tap the three dots (top right), then choose Copy. In Google Docs, you just need a single short tap to bring up the Copy option.
Pasting is very simple, no matter which app you’re in.
As with text, long-press on the spot where you want the image to be inserted.
Pick Paste from the pop-up bar that appears.
This is assuming you can paste at all. In Google Photos, which may well be where you’re sharing most images from, there’s no copy feature at all, strangely enough. In this app:
Tap on a photo to make it full screen.
Tap Share to bring up the sharing options.
You can now send the image directly to any other app on your phone by selecting the app, but you can’t copy and paste it.
It’s the same story in quite a few other apps, including WhatsApp and Google Messages. You can’t access copy and cut options there, only the standard share option.
While the image copying and pasting process is rather inconsistent between apps — and at times not available at all — you should be able to get your pictures from one place to another without too much difficulty.
The show stars Noomi Rapace as an astronaut who “returns to Earth after a disaster in space — only to discover that key pieces of her life seem to be missing.” In the trailer, this appears to manifest itself as a series of mysteries — a strange piano, an unknown voice on a tape recorder — along with plenty of unsettling hallucinations. The rest of the cast includes Jonathan Banks, James D’Arcy, Julian Looman, William Catlett, and Barbara Sukowa, and the series is being helmed by creator and writer Peter Harness (Doctor Who).
Constellation premieres with three episodes on February 21st, and new episodes stream on Wednesdays after that. (Between this and Netflix’s Spaceman, it’s looking to be a fun few weeks for fans of haunted astronauts.)
Ford’s new 48-inch digital dashboard is a lot of Android for one car
Screen time is on my side, yes it is. | Image: Ford
The 2024 Lincoln Nautilus will get the new super-sized screen, with other models to follow. And yes, it still supports CarPlay and Android Auto.
When I was invited by Ford to visit its headquarters in Dearborn, Mich, last week and check out its new in-car operating system, I thought I knew what to expect.
It was going to be built on the Android Automotive operating system, so there would be native versions of Maps, Assistant, and other popular Google apps. It would look pretty slick, with graphics powered by Epic’s Unreal engine. And it would still support Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, because Ford has said it won’t restrict access to the popular phone-mirroring services like its rival General Motors.
What else could there possibly be? A lot, apparently. Like a massive 48-inch curved display with crisp 4K graphics stretching the full length of the dash. This pillar-to-pillar panoramic display is the most eye-catching new feature to come to Ford’s vehicle lineup in a long time.
And it puts the automaker on the vanguard of a controversial trend in the auto world that I call “screen maximalism,” in which companies like Tesla, Cadillac, Mercedes-Benz, and BMW are cramming larger and larger screens into their cars, despite warnings from safety experts that larger screens can distract drivers and make driving more dangerous.
But for Ford, the screen is just window dressing. The real innovation is the personalization and modularity offered by Google’s native Android OS, as well as 5G wireless connectivity for over-the-air software updates. The car will recognize the driver and adjust the settings accordingly. And the interior displays can be configured to as much — or as little — information as desired. In that way, the company hopes to better compete with Tesla and other tech-forward car rivals.
“I think displays, in many ways, have been like windows into the inside of the car,” Doug Field, the former Apple and Tesla engineer who now runs Ford’s model e division, told me. “That was one of the things Steve [Jobs] taught us: the hardware should gradually become just a window into the world of software.”
Image: Ford
The 48-inch display is actually two screens side-by-side.
It’s been almost three years since Ford announced it would be swapping its Blackberry QNX-powered version of Sync with one that runs on Google’s Android. The move would allow vehicle owners to experience popular Google apps natively on their cars’ infotainment system without mirroring their phones.
But it would also allow it to continue to offer an OS that was unique to Ford. Sync, the company’s factory-installed infotainment system, has been slowly adding functionality over the years and is now on its fourth generation. Still, the company promised that “millions” of Ford and Lincoln vehicles using the new operating system would hit the road by 2023.
That turned out to be an overly optimistic prediction. The switch took longer than expected, with Ford CEO Jim Farley telling us back in 2022 that the integration was running “months” behind schedule. Now, Ford says the system is ready to go, with the 2024 Lincoln Nautilus being the first to feature the new OS and panoramic display. Other models, including the first Ford-branded vehicle, will be announced later.
The new system won’t be branded as Sync, but Ford has no immediate plans to phase out its in-house operating system. But individual vehicle teams will have discretion about how much screen they want for their models. This suggests that the display layout in a Lincoln Nautilus won’t look the same as that in a Ford Bronco or an F-150 Lightning.
“We’ve really approached infotainment as a platform, and there will be a number of screen configurations that are built into that platform,” Alan Hall, director of technology communications at Ford, told me.
Image: Ford
Other Ford models may have different screen configurations.
At first glance, the total acreage devoted to screens inside the Nautilus is a little overwhelming. Bringing up a map on the 11.1-inch central display and then casting that same map into the panoramic displays creates the odd effect of seeing two versions of the same map in two different places at the same time. Same for the music player. But Ford said everything will be customizable, with customers being able to choose how much or how little information they want to see inside their vehicle.
Ford organizes the panoramic screen into three sections. Moving from left to right there’s the Critical section, which sits behind the steering wheel and serves as the instrument cluster; Supportive, in the central position; and Glanceable, which sits in front of the passenger seat.
Critical information includes typical gauge cluster stuff, like speed, gear selection, and driver assist features. The Supportive section features navigation and directions. And the Glanceable section includes the music player, a clock, and a variety of other so-called “widgets” that can be swapped in and out, depending on the driver’s preferences. These include vehicle information, like graphics for tire pressure and fuel economy. The weather graphic includes little animations for clouds and rain.
Importantly, the panoramic display is not a touchscreen — nor is it actually one contiguous screen. It appeared to be at least two different screens fused together under one piece of curved glass.
All functions are controllable through the 11.1-inch center touchscreen. The panoramic display is positioned directly below the windshield, which Ford says will only require a slight downward glance by the driver to minimize distractions from driving.
Of course, minimizing distractions will be a challenge given how much real estate is being given over to screens. Research suggests that the shift toward touchscreen-based infotainment systems has accompanied a huge increase in driver distraction, with a AAA study concluding that drivers using touch screens were visually and mentally distracted for more than 40 seconds when completing tasks like programming navigation or sending a text message. Removing eyes from the road even for just two seconds doubles the risk for a crash.
Field argues that Ford is following a set of internal guidelines about what it will show drivers on each screen in order to prevent distractions, such as how much animation to allow on the panoramic screen. Ultimately the goal is to keep drivers from looking at their phones by giving them enough information and functionality in the infotainment screen.
“Ford is much more structured in how it thinks about safety than some of the newer companies that are really pushing the envelope on user interfaces,” Field said, “sometimes to the point where I have quite some arguments.”
Image: Ford
You can actually expand CarPlay to fill the entire screen.
Image: Ford
Music player options include Spotify, Tidal, Apple Music, Google Play, and more.
Image: Ford
So much Android.
Image: Ford
Any Bluetooth enabled controller is compatible.
Ford isn’t going as far as some of its rivals in embracing futuristic tech for its vehicles. The company made no mention of “generative AI,” “large-language models,” “augmented reality,” or “software defined vehicles” during its presentation — all of whichwere major themesto emerge from the 2024 CES consumer electronic show earlier this month.
But it wasn’t totally ignoring some of these trends. Ford said its next-gen Android-powered vehicles will offer a range of video streaming and gaming options. The product team demonstrated some of this during the event, including a racing game called Asphalt Nitro 2. Any Bluetooth-enabled video game controller can be linked to the car for easier play. Video streaming and gaming are features that will only be available when the vehicle is parked.
Web browsing will also be available while parked, initially through the Vivaldi browser and then later through Google Chrome. Video streaming apps like PBS Kids, YouTube, and Amazon Prime are also available for download through the Google Play store. And coming soon, Ford owners will be able to use a variety of video conferencing apps — only while parked, of course.
Ford has said it has no plans to get rid of Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. GM caused a stir last year when it said it would ditch the beloved phone-mirroring services for its future lineup of electric vehicles, arguing it curate a better experience for its customers with its own operating system (which also runs on Android).
Not only is Ford not doing the same, it’s leaning into phone-mirroring by making it easier and giving it more prominence. While using CarPlay, customers can project either Apple Maps or Google Maps onto the 48-inch panoramic screen for additional visibility. And Ford’s EVs will be able to link with CarPlay or Android Auto to exchange information like battery life or range estimations for better route planning.
“We’ve actually got like the best CarPlay implementation in our vehicles of anybody in the industry,” Field said. “So why would you try and cut that off from somebody who loves their Apple ecosystem?”
There was nothing official to announce about Apple’s next-generation version of CarPlay that is supposed to take over all the screens in your car. But this looked pretty close to what was promised.
As cars continue on their present trajectory of becoming giant computers on wheels, automakers have struggled with one of the main drivers of the trend: software. Laggy systems, software bugs, and unresponsive screens have become ubiquitous in the automotive world. Connectivity turns everything into a subscription. The transition to the digital age has been rocky at best.
Moreover, people are growing increasingly frustrated with the level of complexity needed to find basic controls. A recent JD Power survey found that overall satisfaction among car owners is down two points from a year ago and three points lower than in 2021. That’s the first time in the 28-year history of the study that the consumer research firm registered a consecutive year-over-year decline in owner satisfaction.
Ford’s product team cited this survey while presenting its new digital interface, arguing its new software will be easier and more user-friendly than other systems. But soon after, I was sitting in the driver’s seat of a Lincoln Nautilus watching a designer demonstrate how to direct climate control by tapping the touchscreen and moving the air current around with the tip of my finger. No physical knobs to adjust the vent, just the screen.
Ford isn’t the only company routing more controls through its screens. Tesla was the first to replace physical controls for functions like climate control and windshield wiper speed with digital interfaces. Other automakers have followed, leading some safety experts to decry what they see as the rapid extinction of physical controls.
Ford’s approach was to combine the teams responsible for physical and digital interfaces to reduce competition between designers, Field said. The company also analyzed anonymized data of how its customers interact with their screens, including how often they change settings to surface certain controls, to get a better sense of which controls they prefer to be physical versus digital.
“I think the way you execute a screen has a lot to do with whether people become really angry that you pulled a button off,” he said. “So it is a hard balance, because the returns you get from moving stuff to the screen aren’t always quite as apparent.”
He added, “Some of it also is a leap of faith that you will be on a journey with the customer. And help them learn over time, that hey, this is actually really cool.”
Meta will let EU users unlink their Instagram, Facebook, and Messenger info ahead of DMA
Image: Meta
EU users will be able to unlink their Instagram and Facebook accounts, as well as other Meta services ahead of the bloc’s new Digital Markets Act (DMA) coming into force in March, the company has announced. The changes will apply in the European Union, European Economic Area, and Switzerland, and notifications informing users of the change will appear in the coming weeks.
The changes mean that EU users will be able to use many of Meta’s services without their information being shared between them. People will be able to use Facebook Messenger as a stand-alone service without a Facebook account, for example, and if they’ve previously linked their Facebook and Instagram accounts they’ll be able to unlink them. (Meta’s help page notes that linking accounts like this is used for features like targeting ads, personalizing content recommendations, and sharing posts).
Facebook Marketplace and Facebook Gaming users will also be able to use these services without them drawing information from their main Facebook accounts, but in both cases Meta says this will lead to reduced functionality. If you use Marketplace without it using your Facebook information, for example, you’ll have to communicate with buyers and sellers over email rather than Facebook Messenger. Facebook Gaming users will be limited to single-player games if they unlink their Facebook information.
Meta’s news follows a similar announcement from Google, which said earlier this month that it would let users stop the sharing of data between services like Search, Youtube, Google Maps, and Chrome. In both cases the changes are the result of the DMA, which fully takes effect on March 6th. Meta and Google’s holding company Alphabet were among the list of six companies designated as “gatekeepers” under the DMA last September.
In addition to regulating how gatekeepers can share data between services, the DMA includes a broad range of rules that are designed to improve competition and level the playing field for businesses that rely on gatekeepers to offer their services. Other major changes that are expected in the EU as a result of the DMA include messaging services like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger being made interoperable with competitors, and Apple being forced to open up iOS to sideloading.
Some Apple apps for Vision Pro will be ‘unmodified’ iPad apps to start
Image: Apple
It won’t be a huge shocker if the bulk of the “over 1 million” apps that Apple says the Vision Pro will launch with are mostly just existing iPad or iPhone versions. But what is a little surprising is that some of Apple’s big first-party apps will be, too, including Podcasts, News, Calendar, and Reminders, according to Mark Gurman’s Power On newsletter for Bloomberg today.
It seems like a bizarre choice for Apple’s big, shiny new platform at first glance. But whether it’s actually a problem may depend on how well the Vision Pro’s gaze-and-tap interface ports to the apps’ touch-first approach. After all, it’s not like the Reminders app needs mind-blowing immersive 3D effects. But part of the appeal of the platform for some folks will be the Vision Pro’s possibilities as a productivity device. If it’s frustrating to use the Calendar app because its main input method doesn’t quite get the job done, that could sour the experience of the $3,500 device a bit.
Gurman’s piece reflects an overall muted Vision Pro app story of late. He writes that developer enthusiasm is low due to factors like Apple’s 30 percent App Store cut, which especially stings for a product that, as he writes, the company may only have made 80,000 units of at launch, making a small pool of users to sell apps to. Also, independent developers who couldn’t get their hands on a Vision Pro developer kit might not want to spend the otherwise high price of entry, which app maker Paul Haddad balked at in a Mastodon post quoted in the Bloomberg story.
Major companies are out, too. Neither YouTube nor Netflix will have a native app for the headset to start, and both opted out of letting their iPad apps run on it. In their case, you can just use their websites through Safari, which could be fine, since both sitessupport 4K playback using Apple’s browser, at least on the Mac. Maybe you won’t miss the apps on the Vision Pro at all (unless you’re especially excited about being able to sit in a desert to watch Star Wars).
None of this is necessarily an indictment of the Vision Pro as a product without knowing how people will use it. We already saw that with the Apple Watch and Apple TV, neither of which is especially known for having a vibrant app ecosystem, but both of which people seem to like all the same. And like those devices, the headset is a distinct platform from the iPad and iPhone. Even so, the lack of developer enthusiasm isn’t especially encouraging. After all, the Vision Pro will need more than a few cool 3D movie apps to thrive.
Can you fix the Magic Mouse by sticking it into an ergonomic shoe?
The Magic Mouse’s new shoe. | Image: Wes Davis / The Verge
This past Christmas, there was a box in my stocking that held something I had half-jokingly added to my wishlist: an “ergonomic” grip that raises, widens, and adds wireless charging to Apple’s Magic Mouse 2. It’s like a little boot with a Lightning adapter tongue that plugs right into your Magic Mouse’s underbelly. Best of all, it’s magnetic, making it perfect for use with a MagSafe puck.
Does this thing totally ruin the sleek Apple aesthetic? Absolutely! And I’m not even remotely convinced by its cheap-feeling plastic that it will last longer than a few months before it just stops working. Yet, somehow, it’s exactly what the Magic Mouse needs.
What it’s called doesn’t really matter, because this isn’t a product any company you’ve ever heard of makes — instead, it showed up on Amazon, seemingly around August or so, under several different company names. Mine is branded Tatofy, but you can find it under brand names like Zeehoo, Bluerin, or Superyofo. They’re all like 30 bucks, and they’re almost certainly all exactly the same product.
Image: Wes Davis / The Verge
This fix for the Magic Mouse 2 is practical, not pretty.
The housing’s grip isn’t perfect. Wireless charging can be iffy sometimes, and the magnet is very weak, so it’ll slip right off of a MagSafe stand. And where the bottom part of it meets the top, there’s a giant seam that loves to collect crud.
But those complaints are so minor. In fact, I’ve found myself using my Magic Mouse at least as often as my Logitech MX Master 3 over the last month. And plunking it onto a nearby MagSafe puck when I’m done with it is a much nicer experience than digging out a Lightning cable every time it dies. But boy is it silly that it’s come to this.
When the Magic Mouse came out, I was genuinely enamored with the multitouch surface that did all these different things using swipes and taps. This single, curved sheet of clear plastic that could do so much felt like the future, especially next to the Magic Trackpad, which is still the best trackpad in the tech world.
Image: Wes Davis / The Verge
The Tatofy grip without the Magic Mouse.
But in practice, it’s just so very awkward. The mouse is low and flat, and I’ve never found a comfortable way to hold it during use — do I lay my hand on it like a big, fleshy blanket? Hold it on either side with my fingertips? I do the latter, even though my hand ends up cramping as a result sometimes. And flipping the Magic Mouse over to charge has always felt silly, even if it’s ultimately not that inconvenient. As more devices adopt wireless charging or USB-C, it’s a minor annoyance having to keep a Lightning cable nearby. This grip fixes both of those problems.
Image: Wes Davis / The Verge
Magnetic charging is the way forward.
Still, I think this goofy shoe I’ve put on my mouse might be more band-aid than a full fix. Yeah, it’s way more comfortable, to me, than using the Magic Mouse on its own, but its very existence is almost an affront to decency after 15 years of virtually the same mouse — surely by now, Apple could have come up with something more practical. And yet, here is my Magic Mouse, just hanging out in a shoe, somehow both better and worse than it ever was.
A new spin on a powerful calendar app
Illustration: William Joel / The Verge
Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 22, 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 huge new Samsung phone, a couple of nifty calendar apps, a new riff on an old game, some more cool AI tools, and much more. Even a new late-night show! In 2024!
And I have a question: what’s your go-to news app? I mean “news” in the broadest way possible — when you’re like, “What’s new and interesting and happening,” do you turn to a social platform? A specific publisher’s app? Reddit? Flipboard? SmartNews? A bunch of browser bookmarks you cycle through? Something else I’ve never heard of? I know a lot of us were hoping Artifact might be the future of Finding The Good Links, but alas, it won’t. So I want to know all your favorite places to go!
Alright, lots to do this week. Let’s go.
(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What apps are you into right now? What are you watching, reading, listening to, crocheting, cooking, or learning about this week? Tell me everything: installer@theverge.com. And if you want to get Installer in your inbox a day before it appears here, you can subscribe here.)
The Drop
The Samsung Galaxy S24. It’s a safe bet that this will be the best Android phone of the year. Samsung keeps pushing on camera specs, integrated AI (it has more Google AI than the Pixels!), and overall how enormous and expensive a phone can actually be. The Ultra is a powerhouse, but the S24 Plus looks like the one to beat.
Notion Calendar. Cron was one of the best-looking calendar apps on the market, and when Notion acquired it in 2022, it was only a matter of time until the two platforms integrated more. Now, Cron is Notion Calendar, with deep database and notes integration. Probably for Notion users only, but there are lots of us out there.
TidyCal 3.0. One more calendar thing: I’ve done a total 180 over the years, and I now prefer a Calendly-style “just put time on my calendar” email rather than a bunch of back and forth. TidyCal is a cheap and easy tool for just that, and it just got a nice redesign, too.
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown. Two weeks into 2024, and already a strong Game of the Year contender! The praise for this side-scroller has been pretty much universal. It’s a good mix of difficult and doable, old structures and new ways of doing stuff. And lots and lots of fighting.
Ayaneo’s Mini PC AM02. I have Ayaneo’s Macintosh-looking AM01 sitting on my desk right now, and it’s delightful. The AM02 looks like an old-school Nintendo console, and I think I like it even more. These are cheap, simple PCs for light gaming or simple tasks, and the aesthetics are just on point.
The DJI Mic 2. I think microphones might be the best thing DJI makes? The drones are great, yeah yeah, but these are some surprisingly high-end mobile mics that any creator or podcaster might want to add to their kit.
After Midnight. I was nervous about the “the whole thing is a game show” shtick for Taylor Tomlinson’s new late-night show, but the first episode totally works — Tomlinson is super funny and a good host, the whole show is bonkers in a fun way, and outside of the first-episode weirdness you always get, I’m bullish on this show being a hit.
The Bose Ultra Open Earbuds. I’ve been increasingly replacing my AirPods with the Ray-Ban Meta glasses because I listen to too many podcasts, and shoving anything into my ear canals hurts after a while. These are a clever — if expensive, at $300 — workaround: high-end earbuds that clip to your ears instead of resting in them. Very curious to test these out.
Superhuman AI. I’m convinced that “write my boring, repetitive business-speak emails for me” is the best current use for AI. And Superhuman’s doing it really nicely — you just sort of sketch out your idea for an email, and boom, it writes it for you. Is it great prose? No. But it’s email! Who cares!
Plants vs. Zombies 3. I honestly forgot about this game, one of the silliest and most fun early mobile games. And now it’s back! I’m not wild about it embracing microtransactions, and it’s not available everywhere yet, but I’m confident I’ll lose a lot of hours in PvZ3 before too long.
Screen share
Vjeran Pavic is always taking pictures. Pictures for The Verge, where he’s our supervising producer for video and also a gadget-photo wizard. Pictures for Instagram. Pictures of his dog, his sick ski tricks, his cat, his travels, everything. Pictures, pictures, pictures. He’s always testing new cameras, too, from drones to GoPros to DSLRs.
I asked Vjeran to share his homescreen thinking he might have a hundred camera apps for a hundred different things. Turns out, not really! It’s just good old-fashioned Camera in there. But he makes really clever use of his photos on his phone, which I’ll let him explain.
Here’s Vjeran’s homescreen, plus five of his many lock screen options, plus some info on the apps he uses and why:
The phone: iPhone 13 Pro Max (with probably better battery health than all y’all’s 15 Pros).
The wallpaper: I like to keep it fresh, so I set up a few different ones that change each time I look at my phone. I picked about 10 different ones, and I swap them out every few months. All of the photos are taken by me and / or of things or people (animals) that are close or meaningful to me — or are simply photos that I think would look good as wallpaper. You’ll see photos of San Francisco and my home country, but the ones that make me the happiest are of my pets.
Once the phone is unlocked, I prefer a very clean look, so my wallpaper is just one very blurred, colorful background. It’s easier on the eyes and has better separation between the apps, text, and the background.
The apps: Messages, Threads (the app with both the most unpredictable and predictable algo out there), Apple Podcasts, Artifact (recently made it onto my first screen but looks like it won’t be there for too long), Apple News, Airmail, Safari, Camera (gotta have that quick access to the camera app, but I still prefer double-clicking the power button to access it like most Android phones do).
I’m not sure if people are utilizing iOS / iPad Focus modes, but I made a few different ones based on time of day, location, or activity. That means my homescreen changes based on a mode, but let’s look at this one, which is part of my most-used Focus mode.
It mostly consists of widgets, which I don’t need to interact with; rather, they give me some info at a quick glance. Things like my fitness rings, weather, battery info. The only one I might swap out soon is the activity one since I also have an Apple Watch. Most of my Focus modes also have just one page of apps / widgets. I used to put everything in folders across multiple pages, but 99 percent of my input comes from just using Spotlight or App Library.
I also asked Vjeran to share a few things he’s into right now. Here’s what he said:
I recently drove by a pretty amazing comic book store near Chico, California. I ended up buying some new and old comic books, including Before Watchmen and Something Is Killing the Children, which I also found out has been picked up by Netflix. I haven’t started reading any of it yet because it feels like I’ve just been recovering from CES all of this week.
I’ve been a ski racer for most of my life, and I love to spend my free time up in the mountains, when possible. But last year, I also picked up snowboarding, and it has been a joy to learn a new sport. (If any of our readers have a cabin in Tahoe, please befriend me. I’ll make you breakfast burritos.) Usually, on my drive up there, I’m pondering why GoPro hasn’t released a new 360 camera since 2019 and if I should jump ship and spend $500 on an Insta360 Ace instead.
I love revisiting older TV shows. And there’s one show that I revisit more often than others — The X-Files. So for the past few months, I’ve been rewatching it in its entirety, reminiscing about times when conspiracy theories were more fun[ny] and almost part of modern folklore. It has some high highs and low lows, and the current season I’m on is one of those lows, so it’s becoming more of a background show while I’m editing or organizing photos.
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.comor message +1 203-570-8663 with your recommendations for anything and everything, and we’ll feature some of our favorites here every week.
“If you’re into romcoms, musicals, cringe, and honest portrayals of mental health issues, you probably want to see Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. The only show where I’ve screamed “Nooooooo!” “That’s not trueeee!” or “Don’t do itttt!” multiple times in each episode.” – Xyan
“Mr Bates vs The Post Office! A fantastic show that has brought attention to a great injustice that was done to postal workers in the UK in the early 2000s!” – Jason
“PlayPilot is pretty much my go-to site for finding out where movies are streaming (or not). We save the stuff we want to see in there and then roll through the services over the year. I just wish they were integrated with LG TVs…” – Robert
“I’ve been digging into The Pale Beyond on Steam, and it’s a really evocative, desperate little narrative resource management game.” – Jordan
“Disclosure: Vox Media is a parent company of The Verge. That said, Unexplainable is such a great podcast. Huge variety of topics. Each episode is short enough to keep me from losing interest yet still manages to pack in a ton of info and be interesting. I learn so much!” – Kelly (Disclosure: I didn’t add this disclosure, I left it in because it’s hilarious.)
“I tried adding Structured to my productivity stack for the new semester, and even though it didn’t stick for me (I’ve got too much structured time that lives in GCal, it turns out), it’s very pretty and fairly full-featured. I liked that it is a lot more forgiving of to-dos that take a nonstandard amount of time, and it builds in space to breathe between blocks without leaving white space begging to be filled.” – Ainslee
“I’m always looking out for iOS games I can play while listening to podcasts. They should be ‘mindless’ and preferably playable in bits while stuck in traffic. The game Holedown always filled that hole for me (no pun intended). But now I learned about the game Finity on Apple Arcade, and I can’t get enough of it.” – Mustapha
“Clear is back, and it looks stunning. And for those at home, there are collectibles: themes, icons, sounds, etc.” – Austin (Austin also sent their referral link, which gets everybody free stuff. Yay, free stuff!)
“Blue Eye Samurai on Netflix is a great show. It’s about an outcast in feudal Japan after they closed themselves off from the rest of the world. Four white men remain in Japan in secret, and the outcast vows to kill them in revenge because being mixed race is a problem in their society. Extra twist: she’s a girl hiding her gender. Commentary on being a woman in that society ensues. Great show, story, characters, setting, and commentary. Comparisons to Mulan be damned.” – Joseph
Signing off
There are two genres of video I will always watch no matter the subject: videos about people who are really good at something explaining how they do it, and videos about super-niche competitions that people care deeply about. My latest discovery in the latter category: the World Jigsaw Puzzle Championship, in which a bunch of puzzlers pull a puzzle out of a bag and try to put it together as quickly as they can. Here’s a great video from a competitor, and the full five-hour livestream of the event. I love learning about the different solving strategies (start with the sky!), I love the drama, and I also want to puzzle competitively now. But I definitely couldn’t hang. I don’t puzzle like these folks puzzle.
The latest Apple Watch SE is matching its lowest price to date this weekend
Pssh. Who needs an SpO2 sensor, anyway? | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
To be honest, most healthy individuals are not missing out on the SpO2 sensor, nor are first-time smartwatch buyers likely to complain about the SE’s lack of an always-on display or some of the fancier health tracking features found on the Series 9. Apple’s latest entry-level watch is still plenty fast, after all, and it can still take advantage of widgets and the bulk of watchOS 10 features. It can also track your sleeping habits and all your basic fitness activities — running, biking, swimming, etc. — making it a solid choice for anyone who doesn’t want to spring for one of Apple’s pricier models.
The Pro Controller for Nintendo Switch is great and all, but if you’re someone who finds PlayStation-style controllers to be more enjoyable, you can’t go wrong with 8BitDo’s Pro 2 Controller. And right now, the excellent gamepad is on sale at Amazon for an all-time low of $39.99 ($10 off) when you clip the on-page coupon for 20 percent off.
Despite its retro vibes, the Pro 2 is built to work with a variety of modern platforms, including macOS, Android, Windows, Valve’s Steam Deck, and — of course — the Nintendo Switch. The well-rounded controller doesn’t offer HD rumble or Amiibo support, though, in exchange, you get a comfier set of grips, an improved D-pad, and a pair of customizable back paddles that let you easily enter commands without taking your thumbs off the sticks. The fact you can also set up to three controller schemes and adjust the sensitivity of the triggers and analog sticks to suit your playstyle is really just a plus.
TP-Link’s RE315 Wi-Fi extender is currently on sale at Amazon for $26.99 ($23 off), which is a paltry $2 shy of its all-time low. I’m not saying it’s going to alleviate your networking woes in the same way a dedicated mesh network might, but I’ve found it to be a good fix for any room with spotty Wi-Fi, especially since it allows you to add a 100Mbps ethernet port to any room. It’s also mesh-compatible with TP-Link routers, if you want even more reliable speeds.
If you’re looking for a Windows laptop that can also double as a capable tablet, Microsoft’s Surface Pro 9 is down to $999.99 ($540 off) at Best Buy with an Intel i5-1235U processor, 16GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage. The Intel laptop is a pretty slick machine overall, with sturdy hardware, a sharp 120Hz display, and a handy stylus garage. What’s more, Best Buy is currently throwing in a Surface Pro Keyboard, which would normally run you $139. Read our review.
Amazon and Elgato are both selling the Elgato Stream Deck Plus for $179.99 ($20 off). It’s a pretty small discount that only applies to the white model, however, it remains one of the better prices we’ve seen on the well-built macro controller, which offers fewer buttons than your standard Stream Deck but includes four programmable dials and an LCD touchscreen for viewing a variety of info at a glance. Read our review.
Samsung’s 27-inch M8 Smart Monitor is on sale for a limited time at Amazon starting at $479.99 ($170 off), matching its all-time low. The newer 4K display is pretty similar to the last-gen model we tested in that it can moonlight as a smart TV with a host of built-in streaming apps, except the latest model also touts a new “welcome screen” that automatically showcases photos, calendar entries, and other personalized info when it detects your phone nearby.
You can currently save 50 percent on a two-pack of Blink’s last-gen outdoor cameras, which are now going for just $89.99 ($90 off) a pair at Best Buy. The 1080p security cameras can last up to two years on two AA batteries, support essentials like motion detection, and work perfectly with Alexa as an Amazon-backed product. That said, you will need to pay extra to store clips and photos.
I really hope Asus didn’t ruin the Zephyrus G14
The Asus Zephyrus G14 and G16 are chunky and funky no more. | Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge
[Editor’s note:Monica Chin is The Verge’s former senior laptop reviewer, currently taking a break from tech journalism. But some things are hard to quit.]
Once upon a time, in the olden days of March 2020, a little company called Asus released a spritely whippersnapper of a gaming laptop called the ROG Zephyrus G14. It weighed just over 3.5 pounds, and it was powered by a truly monstrous AMD processor, the likes of which had never been seen in a 14-inch form factor.
I still remember reviewing that laptop, almost four years ago, like it was yesterday. I remember running the Red Dead Redemption 2 benchmark — the ultimate test at that time — over and over again, poring over the game settings, trying desperately to figure out what I’d messed up to make the egregiously high frame rates I was seeing make sense. (The best Intel had to offer at the time, remember, was Comet Lake. And, well, we don’t talk about Comet Lake in this household.)
Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
The G14 as it was.
And then there was the design. The G14 sported a retro aesthetic, spaceship-y in nature with large, luxuriously comfortable keycaps and a keyboard font that evoked Johnny Rockets. The lid eschewed the smooth and sleek aesthetic around which laptops were just beginning to converge at that time, opting instead to be covered with a curious but totally unique dot matrix. If you paid a bit (okay, a lot) of extra money, those dots became animated LEDs that you could do all kinds of funky things with, from raising a virtual pet to making a dude’s head continuously explode. Since then, there’s been a G14 model that doubles as a DJ deck and another covered in obscure shapes with “BLACK HOLES IN THE NOW” scrawled across the bottom. It has never been a laptop concerned with blending in.
Photo by Monica Chin / The Verge
Ain’t nobody mistaking this for a MacBook.
I remember emailing Asus to ask if the $1,449 price they’d sent me was a typo — shouldn’t something this exceptional be $1,000 more? And I viscerally remember the feeling I got when Asus’ representative replied that no, believe it or not, that was the real price. It was a realization that this computer was something new — that this computer was something different.
The G14 went on to create what was essentially a new category of gaming laptop over the next few years. The product’s popularity made it basically impossible to buy for quite some time. It’s been a huge product for Asus, a near-consistent presence on Best Buy’s bestseller lists, and, anecdotally, one of the gaming laptops I most often saw in the wild.
These days, innovative 14-inch rigs abound. Asus’ wasn’t the first ultraportable gaming notebook — that honor, of course, belongs to the Razer Blade — but the Zephyrus G14 still proved to everyone that not only could heavy-duty games run well on a 14-inch laptop with all-day battery life and a funky, bold design, but also that such a machine did not need to cost an arm and a leg.
It redefined the category, in other words, by being the exact opposite of a MacBook in basically every way.
Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge
RIP to the dot matrix exploding head thing.
Fast-forward to CES 2024. The G14, which has largely retained a facsimile of its 2020 chassis since release, was unveiled with a major redesign. It is much thinner and much lighter. The spaceship vibe is no more. Gone is the dot matrix, as are the exploding heads and virtual fauna that it wrought. The lid is now sleek and professional, with a — I don’t know, is it a slash? — across the center as the sole decoration. Everything about it is rounder, more polished, and prestige. As reports from the show have pointed out, it suddenly looks, feels, and seems a heck of a lot like a MacBook.
The G14 is far from the only CES release that’s blatantly chasing the Mac line when it comes to design. Dell has swapped out its 15-inch and 17-inch XPS configurations for a 14-incher and 16-incher, respectively (sound familiar?). The models have lost not only their full-sized SD slot (sigh), but also their physical function row in favor of haptic touch buttons (another thing a certain Cupertino company tried). Everyone and their mother is grumpy about it. And it’s emblematic of a larger trend we’ve been seeing throughout the computing space in recent years, in which 13-inchers and 14-inchers are converging on a boardroom aesthetic while getting thinner and lighter at all costs.
Now, I understand the desire to emulate the MacBook. It’s a phenomenal line of computers. It’s on top of Best Laptop pages all across the internet, and there’s little disagreement as to its value.
But there are a few things I really hope manufacturers will keep in mind as they mull over whether to scrap designs that were unique and different in pursuit of the MacBook’s look and feel. The first is that the MacBook is not just its look and feel. It’s much more.
I would argue that the reason Apple computers have become the machine that, like, every professional has is, moreso than anything else, their performance. It’s the category-topping power of both their chips and their battery life — it’s the combination of strength and efficiency that they offer. After all, the early-2020 MacBook Pro 13 and the late-2020 MacBook Pro 13 had very similar chassis, but only the latter had both category-topping performance and category-topping battery life, and it only took a few months to totally eclipse its Intel counterpart’s sales. Category-topping performance and category-topping battery life, incidentally, are also what the G14 has had for several years.
I don’t mean to imply that design is unimportant. I am saying that the pursuit of thinness, sleekness, suaveness, whatever you want to call it, often comes with costs.
We’ve seen that play out time and time again. You can look to the transition from the Dell XPS 13, an all-around exceptional laptop that was topping Best pages in the pre-M1 era, to the Dell XPS 13 Plus, a flaming fireball of an ultrabook with about five minutes of battery life, a shallow touchpad, disappointing performance, and a frustrating keyboard that got middling reviews from pretty much everyone. (Tom’s Guide, noted fans of the XPS line, slammed it as “a stunning step backwards.”)
You can look to the ThinkPad Z-series, which had to leave out most of the features that make ThinkPads world renowned in order to maintain a slim frame. The Razer Blade has been doing the thin-and-sleek thing for years on end, and it has consistently been louder, hotter, pricier, and worse in the battery life department than the G14. Heck, you can even look to Apple. After all, the thin-at-all-costs mindset is what subjected us to five years of butterfly keyboard.
I hope this isn’t what’s happening to the G14, the XPS 13, and other major laptops that received redesigns at CES this year. But I’m seeing some warning signs. Last year’s G14 could accommodate up to an RTX 4090 — Nvidia’s top guns — while this year’s caps out at an RTX 4070. I can’t be certain that this is due to the thinner chassis’s reduced cooling capacity, but that seems a likely explanation.
And then there’s battery life, which has long been one of the G14’s most outstanding features. Not only does the 2024 G14 have a smaller battery than its predecessor, but it has a higher-resolution OLED screen. Don’t get me wrong: I love me an OLED screen, especially for gaming, and the Zephyrus’ looks great. But last year’s QHD Mini LED panel was already stunning, with some reviewers reporting that it was basically as good as an OLED. And high-resolution OLED screens combined with H-series processors are rarely a recipe for exceptional battery life. I’ll point you, again, to the XPS 13 Plus. The Acer Swift 3. The HP Pavilion Plus 14. The Asus Zenbook 14X OLED. The HP Spectre x360 13.5. I mean, literally, just take your pick.
I understand the impulse to follow the cool kids to their cafeteria table. Truly, I do. But the Zephyrus G14 had a good thing going. It wasn’t for everyone, but it was wholly and unapologetically itself. It would be a shame, as Windows machines across the market race to catch the MacBook, if such bold products disappeared.
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25244738/Screen_Shot_2024_01_23_at_5.33.46_PM.png)
Screenshot by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25242733/LG_MyView_Smartmonitor_1.jpg)
Image: LG Electronics
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25241358/01_text_copy.jpg)
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25241359/02_text_paste.jpg)
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25241390/03_image_copy.jpg)
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25241391/04_image_share.jpg)
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25240013/Lincoln_Digital_Experience_Driver_POV.jpg)
Image: Ford
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25240014/Lincoln_Digital_Experience_at_Home.jpg)
Image: Ford
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25240017/Ford_Digital_Experience_Apple_CarPlay.jpg)
Image: Ford
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25240018/Ford_Digital_Experience_Spotify.jpg)
Image: Ford
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25240019/Ford_Digital_Experience_Google_Play_Store.jpg)
Image: Ford
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25240023/Ford_Digital_Experience_Asphalt_Nitro_2.jpg)
Image: Ford
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25240027/Lincoln_Digital_Experience_Apple_CarPlay_Maps.gif)
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25239047/IMG_3672.jpg)
Image: Wes Davis / The Verge
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25239186/IMG_3675.jpg)
Image: Wes Davis / The Verge
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25239192/IMG_3674.jpg)
Image: Wes Davis / The Verge
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25237766/Vjeran_Pavic_Homescreen.jpg)
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23250309/akrales_220215_5022_0010.jpg)
Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/21887081/mchin_181207_4189_0009.0.jpg)
Photo by Monica Chin / The Verge
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25211123/010724_CES_2024_Asus_Zephyrus_G14_G16_laptop_ADiBenedetto_0005.jpg)
Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge
