Skip to main content
All Stories Tagged:

Apple

Founded in 1976 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne, Apple is best known for making some of the world's most ubiquitous consumer devices, software, and services: the iPhone, iPad, iMac and MacBook computers, Apple TV, Apple Watch, iOS, iCloud, iTunes, Apple Music, Apple Pay, and many more. Led by CEO Tim Cook since 2011, Apple is one of the largest technology companies in the world alongside Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Facebook.

Featured stories

Here are the best AirPods deals you can get right now

There are deals to be had on most AirPods right now, meaning you can save on everything from the entry-level AirPods to Apple’s latest pair of AirPods Pro.

7

Verge Score

Apple Vision Pro review: magic, until it’s not

The Apple Vision Pro is the best headset anyone’s ever made — and that’s the problem.

W
External Link
You can watch March Madness games for free in the Vision Pro.

The NCAA’s March Madness Live app is also getting a new, swipeable vertical video highlights feed.

The “Vision Pro compatibility” means the iPad app, so you won’t get any “spatial” features, but at least it’s there (unlike, say, YouTube). What, did the Samsung Gear VR app not do well or something?

The NCAA also says it’s offering “expanded live game radio” for Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.


Opera’s mobile browser is getting a lot of new users in the EU.

The company credits the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) for the 164 percent increase in new iOS users it saw from March 5th to the 7th. Opera also saw significant user growth in specific countries, including a 402 percent spike in France and a 143 percent boost in Spain.

Apple started letting iPhone users choose their default browser as part of its compliance with the DMA earlier this month. Besides Opera, Brave and Firefox are also seeing more iPhone users in the EU.


A chart seeing user growth for Opera’s browser
Image: Opera
R
The Verge
The M1 MacBook Air price war between Best Buy and Walmart is on.

Now that Apple’s done selling the M1 MacBook Air, Walmart is offering the 8GB RAM, 256GB storage model for $699, which Best Buy quickly responded to by dropping its price to $649.99.

Other laptops have more capacity, and newer models probably have more software updates to look forward to, but at these prices, it’s harder to complain. So let us know, are any of you picking up one more wedge-shaped laptop while you still can?

Note: If you buy something from these links, we might get affiliate revenue.


Everything we know about Apple’s Vision Pro

Apple’s long-rumored virtual and augmented reality headset Vision Pro headset launches in February. Here’s a timeline of all the details that have emerged about the device over the years and what we know so far.

Apple Watch ban: everything you need to know

Apple’s ability to sell the Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 in the US is in trouble due to a patent dispute — here’s all the latest news.

W
External Link
Oracle warns that macOS Sonoma 14.4 on Apple Silicon breaks Java.

Product management director Aurelio Garcia-Ribeyro wrote on Friday that “all Java versions from Java 8 to the early access builds of JDK 22” are affected by a bug that causes the Java process to terminate unexpectedly.

Oracle’s issue tracker that lists the bug as open and unresolved says Macs on 64-bit Intel hardware are unaffected. The company recommends users wait to update.


W
Youtube
FineWoven case dirty? Just clean it! It’s okay!

Faruk from the iPhonedo YouTube channel wants to lay the online “drama” around Apple’s scratch-prone case to rest. So he spruced up the grossest one he says he could find on eBay.

After bringing it back to life, he has a message about product upkeep for his viewers. Text alone doesn’t do his delivery justice — keep your ears open around the 7:30 mark.


W
External Link
Apple will face an AirTags class-action lawsuit.

Judge Vince Chhabria of California’s Northern District found that three plaintiffs had sufficiently claimed “negligence and product liability” in the suit, which alleges that AirTags “help stalkers track their victims,” Bloomberg reported Friday.

Bloomberg quotes Judge Chhabria:

“Apple may ultimately be right that California law did not require it to do more to diminish the ability of stalkers to use AirTags effectively, but that determination cannot be made at this early stage,”


W
The Verge
You’ll get your OLED iPads when they’re good and ready.

Apple’s updated tablets should arrive after “a variant of iPadOS 17.4” is finished around the end of this month or “sometime in April,” Mark Gurman writes in the subscriber version of Power On for Bloomberg today.

He also writes that the new USB-C AirPods — the entry-level model and a mid-tier version with noise-canceling — are expected “around September or October.”


A better way to find stuff to watch

Plus, in this week’s Installer: how the Apple Car failed, a great Cold War doc, an AI texting app, and much more.

8

Verge Score

Apple MacBook Pro 16 M3 Max review

It’s undoubtedly fast, powerful, and earns the Pro moniker. It’ll also cost you a pretty penny.

W
External Link
You can now browse Vision Pro apps on the web.

It’s essentially the same thing you’d see if you were browsing the store in the Vision Pro itself — a few curated lists of native apps here, some recommended iPad apps there.

But at least there’s a way to casually cruise those sweet spatial apps without popping the headset on now.


Is YouTube Music testing Google’s Hum to Search feature?

A Reddit commenter posted a screenshot today showing what they said is the Hum to Search option in the YouTube Music on iOS

Google has let you search by humming a tune for years and started testing it in the Android YouTube app in August. Like 9to5Google, I’m not seeing it on my own iOS or Android devices. Are you?


A screenshot showing a new icon of a waveform next to the search field
Is Hum to Search coming to YouTube Music?
Image: Izmir_Stinger / Reddit
J
External Link
Apple settles class-action shareholder lawsuit for $490 million.

The iPhone maker was accused of defrauding shareholders when it cut its quarterly revenue forecast by up to $9 billion in 2019 due to US-China trade tensions. That announcement literally decimated its share price, just a couple of months after CEO Tim Cook declined to put China in the same category as other emerging markets where Apple faced sales pressure.

Reuters notes that the settlement, which covers any investors who bought shares in those two months, amounts to under two days of profit for Apple.


C
External Link
The sports streaming mega-service now has a CEO.

Pete Distad has been named CEO of the upcoming sports streaming service from ESPN, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery. Distad has had lengthy stints at both Apple — where he had a big hand in getting Apple TV Plus off the ground — and Hulu. He left Apple back in May.

The as-yet-unnamed service will launch this fall and is expected to cost around $50. “Pricing is going to be in the higher ranges of what people have talked about,” Fox Corp CEO Lachlan Murdoch said in early March.


E
External Link
Apple has acquired an AI startup called DarwinAI.

That’s according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, who says Apple acquired the Canadian firm earlier this year. DarwinAI makes AI systems that visually inspect components for manufacturers, but, as pointed out by Bloomberg, the startup also aims to “make neural network models smaller and faster.”

This tech might prove useful to Apple, which is working to optimize large language models for phones.


A
Youtube
Open wide for some soccer.

Apple is hoping to lure some new users to its MLS Season Pass service this weekend with a free trial. That means you can check out 14 games on March 16th and 17th without a subscription — the full schedule is here — and, yes, Lionel Messi and Inter Miami are playing on Saturday.


E
External Link
Apple Sports’ first update adds March Madness and more.

The app, which lets you get the latest on your favorite sports teams, view stats, and find betting odds, will now let you follow the NCAA’s March Madness tournament as part of its version 1.1 update. Apple Sports will also add data from the MLB when the season officially kicks off later this month.


E
Quote
Firefox saw an increase in users following Apple’s default browser changes in the EU.

Firefox spokesperson Christopher Hilton tells The Verge that the browser has seen a more than 50 percent jump in users in Germany and a nearly 30 percent increase in France:

Despite less than ideal compliance, the recent implementation of the DMA choice screen is a promising step toward true competition online in the EU... Still, there is a lot of room for improvement, and we’ll continue to fight for a web that puts people over profits, prioritizes privacy and is open and accessible to all.

Brave saw a similar increase in users after Apple started letting users choose their default browsers on iOS 17.4 in the EU last week.


V
External Link
Apple made the Vision Pro blurry... on purpose?!

I’m not the one making this very big claim. That’d be Hugo Barra, former VP of Android and head of Oculus. Go check out his in-depth blog about his Vision Pro experience. It’s a great read overall, but this bit stood out:

Intentionally making the Vision Pro optics blurry is a clever move by Apple because it results in way smoother graphics across the board by hiding the screen door effect (which in practice means that you won’t see pixelation artifacts).

I’ve been hopping between both headsets and... I see what he’s saying!


Filed under:

You, me, and UI

The Apple Lisa was a design revolution — and it still feels like one today

The Lisa helped create the design language for computers as we know them. Here’s what it’s like to use one.

T
Twitter
Brave choice.

Brave says its browser is having a hockey stick moment after the release of Apple’s DMA-compliant iOS 17.4 last week, which immediately nags users to choose their default browser from a randomized list upon startup.


Q
External Link
Owen Wilson will star in a new show on Apple TV Plus.

With Loki season two wrapped up, an unnamed 10-episode comedy written by Jason Keller (Ford v Ferrari) sounds like it could be worth a watch.

Starring Wilson in the lead role, the comedy follows Pryce Cahill, an over-the-hill, ex-pro golfer whose career was derailed prematurely 20 years ago. After he gets fired from his job at an Indiana sporting goods store and his wife walks out on him, Pryce hedges his bets entirely on a troubled 17-year-old golf phenom.

I’m hoping it’s the spiritual Happy Gilmore successor I’ve futilely prayed for over the years.


W
External Link
Masimo jailbroke iPhones to try to keep the Apple Watch banned.

That’s according to the US Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) recently-published January 12th ruling that approved Apple’s modification meant to lift the Apple Watch ban.

CBP chief Dax Terrill wrote that Masimo installed “otherwise restricted software that, but for the jailbreaking, would not have been feasible.” He concluded that the software change “would appear to resolve the issue of infringement.”