Technology

BMW is dropping touchscreens from many of its new cars due to the chip shortage, according to a forum post on BimmerFest and later confirmed by the car company to Edmunds and AutoBlog. While we’ve seen other auto manufactures have to pause production or cut other features, this omission is a big deal — nowadays, touchscreens are a fairly standard feature in cars, and not having one will affect how you interact with the car almost every day. According to the BimmerFest post, some affected vehicles (which include the 3 Series sedans, and X5, X6, and X7 SUVs / crossovers) will also lose access to the backup assistant feature as well, which automatically backs into spots for you after recording how you drove through them going forward. The post also says that cars shipped without touchscreens ...

Microsoft is hosting an event next week focused on education technology. It’s taking place November 9th at 12PM ET. Details are light, but here’s Microsoft’s description of the event: Join us at 9 a.m. PT on Tuesday, Nov. 9, as we share an inside look at the latest tech solutions while examining gaps in learning left by the pandemic. Hear from Microsoft partners, school leaders and a few special guests, and learn about new and existing technology from Microsoft Education. The event arrives just over a month after the company released Windows 11, its next major operating system. Perhaps the company will detail upcoming education-focused updates on the way for Windows 11. Microsoft’s vague hint about “new and existing technology” indicates we could see new hardware revealed at the event as w...

Since macOS Monterey was released, there have been several Apple users who said that installing the update bricked their computers. It was unclear what might have caused the issue until today, as Rene Ritchie reports, he has received this statement from Apple citing an issue with the firmware of its T2 security chip (via 9to5Mac). We have identified and fixed an issue with the firmware on the Apple T2 security chip that prevented a very small number of users from booting up their Mac after updating macOS. The updated firmware is now included with the existing macOS updates. Any users impacted by this issue can contact Apple Support for assistance. There aren’t any specifics on the models affected, possible settings or configurations that are vulnerable, or exactly what a “small number of u...

Google has quietly removed its “Your News Update” feature from Assistant, axing the algorithmically personalized audio digest in favor of the company’s existing (and more traditional) news briefings, as spotted by 9to5Google. Originally launched in 2019, Your News Update was an attempt at bringing the same kinds of algorithmic feeds that had been so successful on Facebook or other areas of Google’s products to audio news. Instead of users picking their three specific new sources (like NPR, The New York Times, or CNN), Your News Update would rely on Google’s wealth of personal data to offer far more specific and relevant news updates from a broad range of partners that Google was licensing news from. As The Verge’s Dieter Bohn pointed out at the time of release, the issue with that kind of ...

Black Friday officially starts on November 26th, however, we’re already starting to see significant discounts on some of this year’s most popular pieces of tech. Starting in October, some retailers — including Amazon, Best Buy, Target, and Walmart — began lowering prices on goods ranging from Apple’s AirPods to LG’s C1 OLED as a part of their early Black Friday sales. The great news is these stores are now starting to drop prices even more aggressively as we approach the big day, and many of them have price-matching policies that guarantee you’ll get the lowest price. Below we’ve compiled some of the best early Black Friday deals available so far, along with some information about upcoming Black Friday sales so you can prepare and score a great deal before it sells out. Amazon Black Friday...

The FBI is warning people of a new breed of scam involving cryptocurrency ATMs. A con artist convinces a person to put cash into a cryptocurrency ATM and send the purchased coins to the scammer using an address stored in a QR code (via CoinDesk). While the actual scamming is relatively low-tech, it’s an interesting misuse of technology and shows how criminals are using crypto to “improve” on old methods. As the agency describes it, the scammer will contact their victim and somehow convince them that they need to send money, either with promises of love, further riches, or by impersonating an actual institution like a bank or utility company. After the mark is convinced, the scammer will have them get cash (sometimes out of investment or retirement accounts), and head to an ATM that sells c...

Your dangerously slippery Pixel 6 or 6 Pro just arrived, and you’re scrambling to find an available case that will protect your new baby. Whether you are a MagSafe-curious Pixel owner or recently ditched your iPhone for the Pixel but have some MagSafe accessories you don’t want to waste, Moment’s (M)Force case for Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro could be the bridge to more platform agnostic mobile accessories. As a mobile accessory maker, Moment embraces the idea that its ecosystem of lenses and mounts for content creators should be compatible with different phone brands and models. After all, each case is compatible with Moment’s catalog of accessories that shares the same mount design — just like the way camera lenses work with various camera bodies. This is not the first time that Moment has ma...

Nintendo quietly added a turnip price tracker for Animal Crossing: New Horizons to the Nintendo Switch Online app, but it’s not as useful as I was hoping. Disappointingly, the tracker doesn’t show the current turnip price on your island. Instead, it lists historical prices over the past week. To see the tracker, which is cleverly dubbed the Turnip Tracker, you’ll need to be a Nintendo Switch Online subscriber. If you are, open the Nintendo Switch Online app, tap the Animal Crossing: New Horizons icon, tap the “Island Newspaper” on the list of NookLink apps, and scroll down to the bottom. Below is an image of what the tracker looks like on my iPhone 12 Mini, taken as I was writing this article. You can see it’s missing the current price and the morning’s price. It’s been a bad week for turn...

The Honeywell Home T9, Resideo’s first consumer thermostat to support remote temperature sensors, has finally brought a long-promised feature to its users: HomeKit. The brand, which is licensed by Resideo and spun out of Honeywell in 2018, already has support for Apple’s smart home system in its T5 thermostat, also known as Lyric T5, but that device doesn’t have external sensors. Sensors can help make sure you’re comfortable in the room you’re in, rather than just maintaining the desired temperature where the thermostat is. As Verge editor Dan Seifert wrote in his review of the Honeywell T9, its sensors are very good and able to measure humidity in addition to temperature, something neither Nest nor Ecobee’s remote sensors can do. They can also sense motion and presence and will adjust the...

Amazon’s latest attempt to entertain your children is an innovative effort that combines an interactive projector with Amazon Kids Plus’ excellent catalog of child-friendly content. What it is not is an Alexa device, despite having four microphones built in and sharing a name with the Echo lamp for kids. Rather than being a part of Amazon’s growing, open smart home ecosystem, the $300 Amazon Glow is an expensive, manicured walled garden for your kids. A video calling / interactive gaming device specifically designed to make it easier for children to communicate with friends and family remotely, the Amazon Glow is attempting to make these rather forced interactions more natural, engaging, and fun. Where Facebook’s Portal Go tries to solve the problem of wriggly, distractible kids by making ...

The Nintendo Switch with an OLED screen isn’t even a month old, but the company is already talking about some kind of successor to its wildly popular console / handheld hybrid — although vaguely. In a presentation to investors, Nintendo hints toward some of its plans in an extremely unspecific way. The company plans to “continue to expand its business around the core concept of creating unique integrated hardware-software products,” which I’m taking to mean that the company will (brace yourself) make more video games and video game hardware in the future. On the slide, which you can see for yourself on page 41 here (PDF), Nintendo also has a timeline of some of its hardware efforts and specifically includes its “next gaming system” slated to release at an undefined 20XX date. (So sometime ...