Connectivity stole the show at CES 2024 this year more than any other in recent memory. Wi-Fi 7 is the new standard that crept up in the industry with fast speeds and lower latency. There's also Thunderbolt 5, the latest connectivity standard from Intel that promises double the bandwidth of Thunderbolt 4. Although Wi-Fi 7 is a significant achievement, Thunderbolt 5 is truly an exciting standard that opens up new possibilities for what you can do with external hardware.

Image: The Verge For years, Apple’s App Store policies have made it impossible for apps to sell digital services and goods on their own terms. A new law in the EU could change all of that — and Spotify is prepared. Continue reading…

Image: Pocket Pair Palworld, a new multiplayer monster-collecting survival game, has sold more than 7 million copies in just five days, and now the developers behind it are sharing a roadmap of what’s to come. Dubbed “Pokémon with guns” by many, Palworld is set to get player-vs-player (PvP) fights, raid bosses, a PvP arena mode, and Steam / Xbox crossplay support.Developer Pocket Pair revealed the planned future updates in a post on X (formerly Twitter) today with no time frame for when they will arrive. Palworld is also getting “various Xbox feature improvements,” alongside server transfers and migrations, improvements to the game’s building system, and new islands, pals, bosses, and technologies.[The Future of Palworld] We would like to share with... Continue reading…

This is the fastest AM4 processor you can upgrade to if you’re not ready to buy into AM5. AMD made bank on its Ryzen chipsets on the strength of bored pandemic-era gamers who spent their stimulus checks on new PC builds. Ryzen CPUs offered arguably the best price-to-performance value back then, causing many to go all in on AM4-based systems. AMD has since switched to the next-generation AM5 platform, but there’s still plenty of room on the upgrade path for those not interested in shelling out hundreds or thousands on newer hardware. Take the top-line Ryzen 9 5950X, for instance, which has never been cheaper than the $364.99 price currently showing at Amazon (18 percent off). The Ryzen 9 5950X is admittedly overkill for most people. It has 16 physical cores with 32 threads, 3.4GHz base and 4.9GHz boost clock speeds, a very... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google Cloud’s new partnership with AI model repository Hugging Face is letting developers build, train, and deploy AI models without needing to pay for a Google Cloud subscription. Now, outside developers using Hugging Face’s platform will have “cost-effective” access to Google’s tensor processing units (TPU) and GPU supercomputers, which will include thousands of Nvidia’s in-demand and export-restricted H100s.Hugging Face is one of the more popular AI model repositories, storing open-sourced foundation models like Meta’s Llama 2 and Stability AI’s Stable Diffusion. It also has many databases for model training. There are over 350,000 models hosted on the platform for developers to work with or upload their own models to Hugging... Continue reading…

Rumors of a 5G-modem enabled MacBook Pro have been gaining more and more traction in 2023. With Apple completing its acquisition of Intel's failed modem business in 2019, and increasing reports that Apple is now developing its own 5G modems in-house for use in the iPhone, the ground may be being laid for a cellular enabled Laptop. When we'll actually see a cellular MacBook Pro is a matter of debate, but there's one question to discuss in the interim. Do users really want a cellular-enabled laptop? We think so, and we'll explore some of the reasons why we think that cellular connectivity might be a huge upgrade for the MacBook Pro.

At the Ignite conference in November last year, Microsoft confirmed that 3D immersive experiences powered by Microsoft Mesh are coming to Teams. True to its word, the Redmond tech giant has announced that Mesh experiences are now generally available in Microsoft Teams, offering ready-made 3D immersive spaces that blur the line between virtual and in-person meetings.

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Tesla reported earnings of $7.9 billion in net income on $25.2 billion in revenue during the fourth quarter of 2023. The figures represent an increase in revenue, up from $24.3 billion the same time last year. The company added that its vehicle volume growth rate in 2024 “may be notably lower” than it was in 2023 as it works to launch Tesla’s next-gen vehicle.Responding to a question about its next-gen vehicles during the earnings call, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the company is targeting production “towards the end of 2025” but warned of delays due to the complexities of the manufacturing process. “We are focused on bringing the next generation platform to market as quickly as we can, with the plan to start production at Gigafactory... Continue reading…

Concept Tesla design images shown off in a recent corporate video. | Image: Tesla Tesla is eying a June 2025 kickoff for production of a new mass-market compact crossover, Reuters reports. The company has apparently invited suppliers to bid to work on the car, and is forecasting producing 10,000 vehicles weekly. Tesla did not respond to The Verge’s request for comment on Reuters’ report.News that production of the next-generation vehicle could be just a year and a half away comes as Tesla is facing intense competition in the electric vehicle market from BYD, a Chinese automaker that Reuters reports overtook Tesla to become the world’s top EV maker by sales in the fourth quarter of 2023. While BYD has grown rapidly off the back of its affordable cars, The Wall Street Journal notes that it’s moving into selling more... Continue reading…

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) opened an inquiry into the investments of Big Tech companies that provide cloud services to smaller AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic.The FTC sent letters to Alphabet, Amazon, Anthropic, Microsoft, and OpenAI, requiring the companies to explain the impact these investments have on the competitive landscape of generative AI. The commission wants to “scrutinize corporate partnerships and investments with AI providers to build a better internal understanding of these relationships and their impact on the competitive landscape.” Google and Amazon invested in Anthropic, while Microsoft has a close financial relationship with OpenAI.The FTC wants information on the specific investment agreements... Continue reading…

What makes iPhones so great isn't just the durable hardware. The software that fuels these devices is what enables users to make the most out of them. Thanks to iOS, users can utilize a wide range of features and tools that help them maximize their iPhones' usability. One of these lesser known features available on iOS 17 and earlier versions is Guided Access. In this guide, we will be breaking it down by explaining how to set it up and use it.

Building a new PC can be a fun, if somewhat daunting process if you're doing it for the first time. Even if you run into some challenges, it's usually worth it for the feeling of turning it on for the first time knowing you have a faster (presumably) experience waiting for you... That is, until you realize you still have to install an operating system, such as Windows 11.