In July 2023, I deleted the Day One journaling app from my phone and laptop. It was perhaps the best thing I’ve done as a lifelong diarist. The decision was prompted by Apple announcing its Journal app at WWDC that year. In that keynote, Apple said it would use “on-device machine learning” to provide prompts […]
This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on deep-sea mining and critical minerals, follow Justine Calma. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers’ inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here. How it started This is not how I thought things would go […]
It was all just supposed to be a one-time thing. When Burning Man got canceled because of covid-19 in 2020, a number of attendees banded together to re-create the festival on the social VR platform Altspace. That virtual Burning Man experience not only attracted around 13,000 visitors, but also accolades from the Producers Guild of […]
Hello there, world! Welcome to the second issue of Regulator, a newsletter about the collision between Big Tech and Washington. If you enjoy this, consider subscribing to get this newsletter weekly and everything The Verge has to offer. Lobbying might be a dubious industry, but lobbyists themselves are often some of the best sources in […]
How it started I carry a lot of different phones around, and I rarely get questions about them because most people stopped talking about which phone they own around 2017. I could be using an unreleased iPhone 18 Pro Max Air Ultra to pay for my coffee and nobody would raise an eyebrow (present company […]
It’s game time for streaming services: a growing number of streamers are betting on casual games as a way to keep viewers hooked when they’ve run out of things to watch. Toronto-based Zone-ify added free casual games to its ad-supported streaming service in June. Last month, close to 70 casual games arrived on Happykids and […]
Hello there, world! Welcome to the first issue of Regulator, a newsletter about the collision between Big Tech and Washington. If you enjoy this, consider subscribing to get this newsletter weekly and everything The Verge has to offer. For anyone who subscribed via our Instagram announcement: I am so, so sorry that I didn’t use […]
How it started When I was growing up in the Midwest, everyone I knew drove small cars. My dad had a light pink Volvo 240, my mom drove a Dodge Dart, and my grandmother had a 1988 Honda Accord – which would eventually become my first car. We lived in the suburbs, so almost no […]
I keep hearing the same sentence repeating in my head. “My vision is that every American is wearing a wearable within four years.” RFK Jr., our current secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, said this at a congressional hearing at the end of June. Wearables, he said, are key to the MAHA […]
Last year, Google surprised online video publishers with some stunning news: the company, which now generates over a quarter trillion dollars with advertising every year, effectively admitted that it isn’t very good at selling ads for its own smart TV platform, Google TV. The issue at heart: Google has long required publishers to share a […]