Technology

Dbrand has revealed a brand-new design for its PS5 Darkplates just days after yanking the originals from sale. If you weren’t familiar with the original Darkplates, they looked exactly like the side shells of a PS5, but instead of being white, they were matte black. In its marketing of the first version, the company baited Sony to “Go ahead, sue us,” and Sony unsurprisingly followed up with a legal threat. Shockingly, just days after making a big public stink about Sony forcing it to pull the old version, Dbrand is already ready with a new design. The company says they’ve been in development since September, but conveniently would not tell us when Sony sent the cease-and-desist to begin with. Darkplates 2.0 look a little different than the original model. While they still attach to the sid...

Apple has unveiled its official polishing cloth, compatible to gently clean more than a dozen of its products. Although its fabric is not explicitly stated by the tech company, Apple shared on its website that it is crafted “with soft, nonabrasive material” and arrives with a minimal logo on the right hand corner. The polishing cloth “cleans any Apple display, including nano-texture glass, safely and effectively” and is compatible with iPhones from the first generation SE to the current iPhone 13 line, iPads from the first Mini generation to the sixth, MacBook and iMac models from 2012 to 2020, Apple Watches from the first generation to Series 7, iPods from the fourth generation Shuffle to the seventh generation Touch and Pro Display XR models. Purchase Apple’s Polishing Cloth on the Apple...

I nearly bought my first MacBook Pro in 2015. It would have been the first Mac I ever personally owned. But I convinced myself to wait another year for faster Intel chips — and in October 2016, Apple took away almost everything I admired about that Mac in one fell swoop. The comfortable keyboard? Replaced with a too-thin slab that also became a nightmare for many a Mac user over the years, the butterfly switch mechanism so fragile a speck of dust could lay it low. The handy SD card slot for photographers and videographers, and the HDMI port to easily connect to monitors or TVs? Both axed seemingly in favor of selling us more overpriced dongles. In the quest for ever-thinner and flashier laptops, Apple had seemingly forgotten why people bought the MacBook Pro in the first place — and pros w...

As the Steam Deck’s December 2021 launch approaches, Valve is taking time to make sure gamers know which titles will work on its portable machine. While its site still promises “Your Steam Library, anywhere,” we’ve had an interest — and a little skepticism — about whether or not games built for PCs will actually work well on a handheld device that runs Linux. The company recently opened up its @OnDeck Twitter account to highlight demonstrations of PC games running on the Steam Deck, and today it revealed the Steam Deck Compatibility program. Steam Deck compatibility labels appear on any game published via Steam, separating them into four categories. The highest level, Verified, has a green logo with a check mark, indicating games that work “great on Steam Deck, right out of the box.” Steam...

AMC has expanded open captioning on some film showings to 240 cinemas in the US, including select showtimes for all of its newer releases. The expansion of support in its theaters across the US — which has been extended to more than 100 markets — is AMC’s most significant push into captioned showings to date. A spokesperson told The Verge prior to the summer and fall of 2021, just a handful of AMC’s US theaters supported open captioning (which is viewable to everyone in the auditorium and separate from AMC’s closed-captioned assisted moviegoing initiative, which is available at all of its theaters nationwide). “We anticipate strong demand with growing awareness of open caption showtimes.” Again, not all AMC showings will include open captioning, but AMC said that theaters that do offer ope...

Google’s upcoming phones have made early appearances in leaks over, and over, and over, and over, and over again, so it’s really no surprise that someone seems to have obtained a retail-boxed Pixel 6 unit ahead of the fall launch event tomorrow. In a video posted initially to TikTok, then deleted but still available on Twitter for a few hours, @CristianDimboiu took a literal approach to unboxing by removing the “Sorta Seafoam” green device from its carrier without going any further. We didn’t see the screen turn on or see the screen at all. Fortunately, Google apparently ships its new phone upside down so that we could see the camera bar at the back with multiple lenses. It also appears that this phone ships with a cable and USB-C adapter but no charger, so hopefully, new owners will have ...

Apple on Monday unveiled a completely redesigned MacBook Pro lineup alongside two new chip options at its Unleashed event in Cupertino, California. The new MacBook Pro comes in 14-inch or 16-inch models and can be further customized with either the new M1 Pro or M1 Max chip. The computer’s hardware has been updated to include a Liquid Retina XDR display, a 1080p FaceTime HD camera, better audio systems and a broader range of ports — including three Thunderbolt 4 ports, an SDXC card slot, an HDMI port and an improved headphone jack — for better connectivity. The new 14-inch model delivers up to 17 hours of video playback, while the 16-inch model offers up to 21 hours of video playback — the longest battery life ever on a Mac notebook — and delivers the same level of performance whether...

During Apple‘s Unleashed event on Monday, the tech giant officially unveiled its third generation of AirPods. The latest update arrives with an all-new design, equipped with a new low distortion driver that delivers powerful bass and clear high frequencies. The listening device supports spatial audio, which provides a three-dimensional immersive listening experience for both surround-sound music and videos. By combining the power of the H1 chip with a new acoustic system, the new AirPods utilize computational audio to produce high-quality sound with Adaptive EQ. The design, which Apple says is sweat and water-resistant, presents a new contour that delivers sound “directly to your ears” as well as real-time tuning audio, like the AirPods Pro. The third-generation AirPods’ battery life has i...

Over 10 years before his departure from Microsoft’s board amid an investigation over an affair with an employee, former CEO Bill Gates was warned by two company executives about inappropriate emails between him and another woman, The Wall Street Journal reported. While he was still an employee at Microsoft and serving as chairman of the board, Gates and a female employee exchanged “flirtatious” emails and propositioned the employee, the Journal reported. He was married at the time. When confronted by two company executives, Gates reportedly didn’t deny the exchanges and said he would stop the interaction. The executives informed some members of Microsoft’s board, but the board ultimately decided that since there was no physical interaction between the woman and Gates, no further action was...

Disney has just announced delays for its 2022 Marvel films, along with the upcoming fifth Indiana Jones movie, all of which have been pushed back to later in the year or moved to 2023. The Marvel movie shifts are the usual chain reaction delay: to push back one movie means pushing back all of them, so there’s a domino effect in pushing everything back a bit: Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is moving from March 25th, 2022 to May 6th (when Thor: Love and Thunder was originally intended to be released). Thor: Love and Thunder, in turn, moves from May 6th to July 8th (when Black Panther: Wakanda Forever was originally scheduled). Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is moving from July 8th to November 11th (when Captain Marvel sequel The Marvels was planned for). The Marvels is moving fr...

Apple is kicking off the very best week in tech with a rare Monday event, one it’s decided to call “Unleashed.” That could refer to any number of things, but at a high level we are expecting it to be about new, redesigned MacBook Pro laptops with Apple’s own processors. Will they be called M1X, M2, or something else? What will the GPU performance be like? Will battery life match the excellent quality of the original generation of M1 Macs? All open questions we hope to see answered today. There should be two sizes, with 14- and 16-inch screens. There have been long-standing rumors that Apple will bring back an SD card reader slot, MagSafe for charging, and may even switch these Macs over to more advanced, Mini-LED displays. Apple is also said to be doing away with the unloved (except by a f...