When I reviewed the OnePlus Watch 2 last month, I said it had a digital crown. I did so because it had a button with grooves that you could twist and press. I didn’t think much of it, but a few readers contested its crown-ness. This, they said, was naught but a mere button.To that, I furrowed my brow. The problem was that twisting the OnePlus Watch 2’s “digital crown” didn’t do anything. It broke the unspoken nerd covenant that smartwatch crowns must scroll. Pressing the button brings up an app menu, but twisting it? Zip, zilch, nada. On other smartwatches, twisting a crown generally lets you scroll through menus and notifications — whatever’s on your display. Since this button didn’t do that, the people argued, it could not be a... Continue reading…

Image: Microsoft Microsoft unveiled its new Copilot Plus PCs last week, designed to usher in a new wave of AI features in Windows that are exclusive to new laptops. Now, less than two weeks later, Windows enthusiasts have managed to crack Microsoft’s flagship AI-powered Recall feature to run on unsupported hardware.Recall leverages local AI models on new Copilot Plus PCs to run in the background and take snapshots of anything you’ve done or seen on your PC. You then get a timeline you can scrub through and the ability to search for photos, documents, conversations, or anything else on your PC. Microsoft positioned Recall as needing the very latest neural processing units (NPU) on new PCs, but you can actually get it running on older Arm-powered... Continue reading…

The days of Boot Camp natively bringing Windows 10 to Mac users will soon be over, since there is no support for the tool on Macs with Apple silicon. For now, that means users of the best Macs will need to turn to virtualization to run the latest versions of Windows 11 within macOS. To date, our favorite way to install Windows 11 on a Mac has been through using Parallels Desktop 19 for Mac, a great virtualization software designed for macOS. However, a Parallels 19 license costs $100, so it's nowhere near as accessible to Mac users as the free and pre-installed Boot Camp program was. For users looking for a powerful and reliable virtualization tool to run on their Mac, there's good news. As of this month, VMware Fusion Pro 13 is available for personal use completely free.

Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo from Getty Images May 31st marks the official last day of a covid-19 pandemic-era internet subsidy, the Affordable Connectivity Program. The up to $30 monthly broadband discount (up to $75 for those on Tribal lands) helped 23 million low-income households in every county in the US access high-speed internet during a period when that connection became more vital than ever as businesses and schools shut their doors. The Federal Communications Commission and industry players have warned for months that the program would soon run out of money unless Congress found a way to fund it, but the money never materialized.“Without Congressional action to extend funding for the program, millions of households are now at risk of losing their internet connections,”... Continue reading…

The Acer SpatialLabs Eyes Stereo Camera fully integrates with the rest of Acer’s SpatialLabs device lineup. | Image: Acer Acer isn’t a brand that you’d typically associate with photography, but its new camera offering comes with an interesting twist — the ability to snap pictures and video in stereoscopic 3D. Announced ahead of next week’s Computex event, the SpatialLabs Eyes Stereo Camera also allows users to livestream 3D content to YouTube, and make 3D video calls on Zoom, Teams, and Google Meet.Acer says the SpatialLabs Eyes Stereo Camera will be available in Q3 this year starting at $549. It fully integrates with Acer’s lineup of SpatialLabs 3D devices — such as the Aspire 3D 15 SpatialLabs Edition laptop — which have wowed us with their impressive ability to display glasses-free 3D content. Images and video recorded on the SpatialLabs camera can also... Continue reading…

The new PlayStation 5 “slim” is matching its all-time low of $449 ($50 off) for a limited time. | Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge Sony’s recent State of Play showcase may have given us a brief glimpse into the company’s plans for 2024 and beyond, but that probably does little if you were hoping for something you can play right now. That’s where the Days of Play sale comes in. Now through June 12th, Sony is discounting dozens of PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4 titles, as well as accompanying hardware, accessories, and subscriptions.First things first, if you’re still looking to pick up a PS5 console, you can save $50 on the PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 5 Digital Edition, which are available for as low as $449 (Amazon, Best Buy, PlayStation Direct) and $399 (Amazon, Best Buy, and PlayStation Direct), respectively. These match the lowest prices we’ve seen on the... Continue reading…

Image: Stellantis Earlier this week, Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares took the stage at the Bernstein investor conference and threw down the gauntlet. Tavares, who oversees companies like Fiat, Chrysler, Dodge, Ram, and, most importantly, Jeep, said the launch of the new all-electric Jeep Wagoneer S would signal the start of an EV “offensive” that would take the US by storm, according to multiple reports. And part of that offensive would include a more affordable electric Jeep, priced somewhere in the range of $25,000. For Jeep CEO Antonio Filosa, the announcement from his boss came as a bit of a shock. “It’s a big challenge,” Filosa said Thursday, hours after unveiling the Wagoneer S in New York City. “And unexpected.” Photo by Michael... Continue reading…

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge If you’ve been on the Facebook app lately, you might’ve seen Meta’s AI inject itself into the comment section with summaries of what people say. Given how wild Facebook comment sections often become, it’s not hard to imagine how ridiculous some of these summaries turn out. (This isn’t the first time Meta’s AI has appeared in the comment section, by the way: 404 Media spotted it pretending to be a parent in a Facebook group.)After seeing screenshots of the feature shared on Threads and Reddit, I decided to check the comment sections on my Facebook app. I found the AI summaries popping up on many of the posts I checked — unhinged responses and all. One AI summary on a post about a store closure said, “Some commenters attribute the closure... Continue reading…

Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos by Getty Images ElevenLabs already offers AI-generated versions of human voices and music. Now, it will let people create sound effects for podcasts, movies, or games, too. The new Sound Effects tool can generate up to 22 seconds of sounds based on user prompts that can be combined with the company’s voice and music platform, and it gives users at least four downloadable audio clip options.The company says it worked with the stock media platform Shutterstock to build a library and train its model on its audio clips. Shutterstock has licensed its content libraries to many AI companies, including OpenAI, Meta, and Google.pic.twitter.com/pxrJy3BPOB— ElevenLabs (@elevenlabsio) May 31, 2024Sound Effects is free to use, but paid tiers can use the... Continue reading…

Driver issues can cause lots of problems on Windows, including degrading system performance and stability. And that's why knowing how to navigate the driver settings is essential if you want to repair Windows. While there are multiple ways to identify and fix problematic drivers on Windows, Microsoft thinks that the verifiergui.exe utility needs to be removed from future versions of Windows.

Computex 2024 is right around the corner, and Acer is introducing a whole lot of new products ahead of the show in Taipei this week. Among them is the new SpatialLabs Eyes Stereo Camera, a pocketable camera with two sensors that makes it possible to take photos and videos in 3D.

HDR or High Dynamic Range has been somewhat of a holy grail in the monitor space for quite a while now. While every manufacturer seems to know the hardware needed to achieve a true HDR experience, no one has managed to bring it to the masses. Unless you have one of the best HDR monitors with a high-end OLED or Mini-LED panel costing upwards of $700 (with $1,000 models being fairly common), you can't expect to see an actual HDR image on your screen.