Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Apple no longer offers its $4.99 per month Apple Music Voice Plan, as reported by MacMagazine. The Voice Plan, introduced in 2021, let you access the Apple Music library via Siri across your devices. But as of Wednesday, it’s no longer listed among the Apple Music plans that you can subscribe to on Apple’s website — the grid on the site currently includes the Student, Individual, and Family plans. (The Voice Plan was listed on the website as of Tuesday, according to an archived version of the page on the Wayback Machine.)If you are currently on the Voice Plan, Apple will turn off auto-renew, the company writes in a support page about the plan’s discontinuation. Naturally, Apple says that you can also switch to one of its other Apple... Continue reading…

Image: Microsoft Microsoft’s 365 Copilot AI assistant is now available for certain enterprise customers. Microsoft is quietly launching its Microsoft 365 Copilot system for a $30-per-month premium per user, but enterprise customers will need to commit to at least 300 users and pick up the phone to Microsoft to get on the list to access this new AI-powered assistant that Microsoft promises will change the way Office documents are created and edited.Businesses willing to pay the premium will be able to use Microsoft 365 Copilot to summarize documents, generate emails, create plans from notes, and even improve Excel analysis. More than 600 enterprise customers have been testing Microsoft 365 Copilot during a paid early access program in recent months. M... Continue reading…

Photo by Arturo Holmes/WireImage Scarlett Johansson is taking legal action against an AI app developer for using her name and likeness in an online ad, according to a report from Variety. The ad was for an AI image editor, called Lisa AI: 90s Yearbook & Avatar, and featured an AI-generated version of Johansson’s voice.As reported by Variety, the 22-second ad showed Johansson behind the scenes while filming Black Widow, where she actually says “What’s up guys? It’s Scarlett and I want you to come with me.” But then, the ad transitions away from Johansson, while an AI-generated voice meant to sound like the actress states: “It’s not limited to avatars only. You can also create images with texts and even your AI videos. I think you shouldn’t miss it.”At the very bottom... Continue reading…

The 2023 Subaru Solterra. | Image: Subaru Subaru is hopping on the Tesla charging port bandwagon. The automaker has announced that it will adopt the North American Charging Standard (NACS) for “certain” electric vehicles starting in 2025.Subaru says it will also supply NACS charging adapters to customers who own or lease an EV with the Combined Charging System (CCS) standard in 2025. The company has been relatively slow to adopt EVs. It currently only offers the Solterra, and even that’s only as part of its partnership with Toyota; everything else is gas-powered. Subaru plans to add to its EV lineup, though, and it has three vehicles in the works that it’s supposed to reveal by 2026.The adoption of the NACS charging port has ramped up significantly after Tesla opened up the... Continue reading…

Photo by Chris Unger/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images This is Hot Pod, The Verge’s newsletter about podcasting and the audio industry. Sign up here for more.For all of the changes Spotify has gone through over the past year, there is still more to come. Those three-year podcast deals the company struck are coming up for renewal, and what Spotify decides to do with them could have reverberations across the industry. The Joe Rogan Experience — the first, the biggest, and the most consequential — will expire in 2024. Today, after speaking with podcasters, producers, analysts, agents, and executives (mostly on background, though a few brave souls went on the record), I take a look at how the Spotify / Rogan relationship could play out. Let me be clear: this is purely a thought exercise. I... Continue reading…

Image: Apple Apple’s new entry-level Apple Pencil with a USB-C port for charging is now available to order, the company announced on Wednesday.At $79, the new Apple Pencil is the company’s most affordable, and it comes with features like tilt sensitivity and the ability to attach magnetically to the side of an iPad. To charge the new Apple Pencil, you can slide the cap on the end to reveal the USB-C port.However, the lower price means this third-generation Apple Pencil doesn’t have some nice features available on the company’s other Apple Pencils, such as pressure sensitivity (found on both the first- and second-generation models) or the ability to pair and charge wirelessly when magnetically attached to an iPad (which you can do with the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Aaron Fernandez for The Verge Let’s face it — Black Friday is no longer reserved for the day following Thanksgiving. What was often considered the single busiest shopping day of the year has evolved into something more expansive post-pandemic, with numerous retailers kicking off their holiday promos as early as October. Despite the recency of Amazon’s fall Prime Day event, Best Buy and Target have already started doling out the early Black Friday deals, slashing prices on noise-canceling headphones, OLED TVs, laptops, smart displays, and a host of other tech. We expect the savings to ramp up as we get closer to November 24th, too, especially as retailers begin instituting their respective price-matching policies and we enter the holiday return window.Thankfully, we... Continue reading…

Illustration by Aaron Fernandez for The Verge It’s official: Halloween is over, and the 2023 holiday season has arrived. And if you want to get a head start on your holiday shopping, retailers like Target and Best Buy have already launched their early Black Friday promos, dropping prices on tablets, wireless earbuds, laptops, and even OLED TVs. What’s more, Amazon and other retailers are matching prices in some cases, letting you save no matter where you shop.We may see better deals arrive as we get closer to November 24th, but what’s discounted so far is still worth a look. For example, Apple’s updated AirPods Pro with USB-C have already returned to the all-time low they first set during Amazon’s recent Prime Day event. A range of other gadgets and gizmos are also on sale, from... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Disney is buying up Comcast’s stake in Hulu. The entertainment giant announced Wednesday that it “expects it will pay” $8.61 billion to acquire Comcast’s 33 percent stake, giving Disney full ownership of Hulu.But Disney might end up paying more than that. Both Disney and Comcast agreed to an appraisal process that will evaluate Hulu’s equity fair value as of September 30th. If Comcast’s stake is determined “to be greater than the guaranteed floor value,” Disney will have to pay Comcast the difference.Disney says the timing of the appraisal process is “uncertain,” but it expects it to be completed sometime next year. This all stems from the deal Disney made with Comcast to buy its one-third stake in Hulu in 2019. The deal was initially... Continue reading…

Chromebooks used to be very cloud-based. If you recently switched to a new Chromebook from a Mac or PC, you might be concerned about what you can do offline. The good news is that you can still perform many common tasks on your laptop without connecting to the internet. In fact, you can accomplish pretty much anything offline on a Chromebook that you can on a Mac or PC.

The Phantom V Fold, from Transsion brand Tecno. | Image: Tecno / Transsion Transsion, a Chinese smartphone manufacturer whose brands include Tecno, Itel, and Infinix, has quietly grown to become the world’s fifth largest smartphone manufacturer, according to recent market reports from Canalys (via Android Central), IDC, and Omdia. Despite being one of the few smartphone brands to grow in the third quarter of this year, many in Europe and North America won’t have heard of Transsion given its focus on markets in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, Asia, and Oceania. Transsion has a particularly strong base in Africa, according to IDC, where it sells more phones than Samsung and Xiaomi. Although this suggests Transsion is focused on affordable smartphones, its Tecno brand recently released its first foldable... Continue reading…

Image: Bethesda Softworks Bethesda is almost ready to officially add Nvidia’s graphics upscaling technology to Starfield, but it will look for help from the PC gaming community first with an opt-in beta test available via Steam. The company says the game’s next update will support DLSS with frame generation (which would mean DLSS 3, if not 3.5) as well as display and HDR controls for supported systems. The RPG’s lack of support for DLSS was an issue before it even launched, with “exclusive PC partner” AMD forced to come out and insist that Bethesda would have its full support if the developers wanted to add support for the Nvidia technology. Once the game was available, modders quickly added unofficial support for the tech, showing how it could improve... Continue reading…