Recently, Qualcomm unveiled the Snapdragon X Elite, its latest SoC for laptops, with some impressive performance claims in tow. The company is aiming to breathe new life into Windows on Arm with custom Arm64 Oryon CPU cores. Despite being marketed as a direct competitor to Apple’s M2 chip, the X Elite’s performance comparisons suggest that it can at least give the recently announced M3 chip a good run for its money. Hearing this will be music to the ears of many people, and rightly so, since Windows on Arm has struggled for years. However, when looking at the grand scheme of things, Qualcomm still has a longer way to go than many people think.

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images This is Hot Pod, The Verge’s newsletter about podcasting and the audio industry. Sign up here for more.It’s that time of year again, when all your friends share their Spotify Wrapped and you (read: me) reply with your boring Apple Music Replay and nobody cares. I do also have Spotify, but my Wrapped isn’t loading, maybe because it has been crashing from overuse. I did receive a tip from acclaimed author Olivia Wolfgang-Smith that if Taylor Swift is your number one artist on Spotify “they show you a little video of her saying thanks for being a simp.”But it’s not just about the music! The end-of-year streaming roundups also give us a glimpse into people’s podcast consumption habits. Let’s get into it.Spotify’s and Apple’s top podcasts... Continue reading…

It's almost the end of the month, which means that it is time yet again to recap all the features that Microsoft added to Excel in the past four weeks. Following a bunch of additions to Excel in October 2023, the Redmond tech giant has now shared a list of capabilities it introduced to its spreadsheet software this month. That said, the list this time around isn't particularly lengthy.

Valve's Steam Deck is a capable handheld video game console that lets you enjoy a vast collection of games as soon as you pull it out of the box. But you also have the option to level up your experience by investing in some useful accessories. For instance, you can purchase a Steam Deck dock to connect it to a gaming monitor, keyboard, and mouse, or you can get a compatible controller. You can also buy wireless earbuds that offer a low latency mode to enjoy games with crystal-clear audio even when you're in public spaces. If you've just bought yourself a shiny new Steam Deck, I recommend buying the following accessories to enhance your gaming experience.

A Google Nest Cam set up in a garage will soon be able to send an alert if the door is left open. | Screenshot by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge Google’s adding a new garage door detection feature to its Nest security cameras that will alert you if your garage door has been left open. The company is also bringing the first-gen Google Nest Outdoor Cam to the Google Home app and finally allowing Nest Cam users to create custom clips in the Google Home app.These new features are part of the Google Home app’s public preview and are rolling out this week. Adina Roth, product manager of Google Home & Nest, announced the updates in a blog post on Wednesday. Image: Google The new garage door detection feature leverages AI image detection, according to Google. According to Roth, the garage door detection feature can detect and alert you when the door is closed,... Continue reading…

If you have a brand new PC or laptop running Windows 11 and want to install Java on it, a key step in this process is to set the Java path. Otherwise, you’ll keep seeing a "command not found" error when you run Java commands. You won’t be able to compile code either, as your computer won't be able to find the Java compiler without an address. Additionally, Integrated Development Environments (IDE), scripts, applications, and other development tools that rely on the Java path won’t function correctly, which means you’ll have to navigate to the specific Java directory each time you run a line of code. Adding the “bin” to your system’s PATH is also required; this allows you to use command-line tools and utilities conveniently by making them globally accessible.

Photo illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos by Philip Pacheco, Bloomberg, Getty Images In a redux of a case against Apple and iOS, Epic aims to dismantle barriers that could spell higher fees for app makers — and, Google argues, keep Android safe and competitive. Continue reading…

The RTX 4090 is a powerhouse graphics card capable of running even the most demanding modern AAA game titles at 4k (CPU bottlenecks aside). It’s easily the most powerful GPU on the planet right now, unless NASA’s keeping something from us, with a price point to reflect it. That said, upgrading your rig with one can be a little confusing when it comes to matching devices to ports, and one question that a lot of people have is what PCIe version the 4090 uses, and if making the most of its power requires an upgrade to your motherboard. Well, we’re here to sort it all out for you.

Why draw the pixel cat in MS Paint when Cocreator can just make it for you? | Image: Microsoft Microsoft is officially launching its Cocreator image-generating AI feature within the Paint app for Windows 11, as reported by Windows Latest. The new integrated text-to-image generator, powered by OpenAI’s DALL-E 3 model, was previously available only to Windows Insiders. As Windows Central points out, the new Cocreator button in Microsoft Paint has now been widely released, giving all users the ability to enter a description of something they’re visualizing and get three generated images to choose between. While the image generator is a new addition to Microsoft Paint, the company has already sprinkled the DALL-E 3 text-to-image-making capability into its other services. Microsoft’s Bing search chatbot was where users initially... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google Drive users on iOS are getting a new scanning feature that lets them quickly photograph documents and add them to their libraries, the search giant has announced. The feature has been available for Android for over a decade, but until now iPhone and iPad users haven’t had the same option. Google has also upgraded the scanner in Drive’s Android app.iPhone users in the US will also benefit from a new title suggestion feature that attempts to auto-generate a document title based on text it recognizes in the scan. The feature previously came to the Android version of Drive earlier this year. Google also says it’s improving document scanning on Android, adding similar features like the option to automatically capture documents when... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge Google announced today that it won’t pull links to Canadian news outlets after all, thanks to an agreement with the government of Canada over the contentious Online News Act or Bill C-18. Google and Alphabet president of global affairs Kent Walker published a statement saying that “following extensive discussions, we are pleased that the Government of Canada has committed to addressing our core issues with Bill C-18,” a rule designed to make large web platforms pay news outlets for using their content. While the exact terms have yet to be published, Walker says the government addressed Google’s previous concerns about creating “uncapped financial liability” for linking to articles, and a report indicates it will pay millions of dollars... Continue reading…

Google Drive is one of the best cloud storage service providers out there, and in the past few months, it has received several updates to improve the overall experience. These include the introduction of a proper location picker for files, better filters, and a design facelift. Now, Google has announced that it is rolling out a new homepage in Drive.