Technology

Today, we learned that Apple’s ultra-premium $550 AirPods Max headphones aren’t ready for the new lossless audio catalog coming to Apple Music next month — and they’re not alone. Apple confirms to The Verge that the HomePod and HomePod mini won’t support lossless audio, either. (MacRumors confirmed the same thing with sources earlier this afternoon.) The good news is that the HomePod and HomePod mini will indeed support the company’s new spacial audio experiences, which are supposed to provide more immersive audio than a standard stereo or virtual surround mix — we were fairly intrigued trying spacial audio on the AirPods Pro, and it’s also coming to Apple Music next month in a bigger way. And, Apple says, it’s not like any of these devices will fail to play back lossless tracks completely...

James Bond, The Handmaid’s Tale, Rocky, Stargate, Robocop, Legally Blonde, Vikings, a historic catalog of films dating back many decades, an array of production and distribution companies, and the content network Epix — these are the things that Amazon might own if it buys storied film giant MGM for billions of dollars in the very near future. Amazon has reportedly offered $9 billion for the company, according to Variety, following a scoop from The Information earlier in the day that suggested a range of $7-10 billion for a potential deal, and Variety suggests that $9 billion was also the amount that MGM was reportedly hoping to get. Between those factors, the fact that MGM has been up for sale since December 2020, and the sudden existence of a new media giant that will see AT&T spin o...

Streaming music might be entering a new era of hi-fi audio, but Apple’s AirPods Max aren’t technically ready to go along for the ride. The company has confirmed to The Verge that its premium noise-canceling headphones do not natively support playback of lossless music files. “Lossless audio is not supported on AirPods, any model,” an Apple spokesperson said by email. “AirPods Max wired listening mode accepts analog output sources only. AirPods Max currently does not support digital audio formats in wired mode.” It makes complete sense that the AirPods and AirPods Pro have no way of playing lossless audio. They’re totally wireless, and Apple supports the AAC codec over Bluetooth. AAC sounds plenty good, but it’s nowhere near the bit rate of CD-quality or high-resolution tracks. To do any be...

The Securities and Exchange Commission has opened an investigation into newly public electric vehicle startup Canoo, CEO Tony Aquila shared on a conference call on Monday. The probe is broad, though the startup said in a regulatory filing that the SEC has characterized it as a “fact-finding inquiry,” and that the agency has not yet concluded whether anyone violated the law. It covers Canoo’s merger with a special purpose acquisition company (or SPAC), plus its “operations, business model, revenues, revenue strategy, customer agreements, earnings and other related topics, along with the recent departures of certain of the Company’s officers.” Canoo says it plans to provide all requested material and fully cooperate. Aquila declined to take any questions about the probe on the call, which wa...

Facebook’s vice president of AR and VR Hugo Barra is leaving the company, he announced (where else) on Facebook Monday. “Today is my last day at Facebook Reality Labs, after 4 years working on projects that have been more exciting and more challenging than anything I’ve encountered in my career, with some of the brightest minds and kindest people I’ve ever had the pleasure to meet,” Barra wrote in the post. He said he planned to “explore the healthcare technology space,” so he could apply what he had learned in consumer tech to solve problems in health care. “I believe society is still poorly equipped with the tools people need to really understand our health and gain control over our health outcomes,” he wrote. After serving as Google’s vice president of Android product management and the...

A new tweet from the official Wear OS Twitter account is teasing an update tomorrow at I/O 2021 to Google’s frequently forgotten smartwatch operating system. Google has even suggested that the developer conference will feature an entirely new version of Wear OS on the I/O Adventure page, the “virtual sandbox” for trying the products Google will announce at the conference, 9to5Google writes. Wear OS has been on a long and bumpy journey up until this point — with new features, but not the dramatic rethinking of the platform that it may need. In the last year, Google has added a new keyboard, support for third-party Tiles (Wear OS’s answer to glanceable widget-like information), and improvements to performance. But the last major design change to Wear OS — other than the addition of Tiles — c...

Public health experts and communities around the country are still struggling to make sense of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s new mask guidelines. Last week, the CDC said it no longer thinks people who are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 need to wear masks in most situations. But cases of COVID-19 are still high in many places, and less than 40 percent of people in the United States are fully vaccinated. In efforts to clarify and explain the agency’s thinking, CDC director Rochelle Walensky focused on the risk COVID-19 poses to each individual person who decides to wear a mask or not wear a mask. People who are vaccinated can decide to skip a mask knowing that they’re safer, and people who aren’t vaccinated should keep them on or sign up for a shot. If they don’t wear a...

Consumers lost over $2 million in cryptocurrency to scammers impersonating Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk over the last six months, the Federal Trade Commission reported Monday. “Promises of guaranteed huge returns or claims that your cryptocurrency will be multiplied are always scams,” the commission said in its Monday report. “Promises of guaranteed huge returns or claims that your cryptocurrency will be multiplied are always scams” For years, scammers have posed as Musk in order to fraud social media users out of cryptocurrency. They use deceptive tactics on sites like Twitter, often using the same avatar images as Musk’s own account and slightly misspelling his username. Pretending to be Musk, the scammers will ask victims to send currency to a specific wallet address in exchange for r...

Google is rolling out a new feature for the Google Phone app that announces who’s calling when the phone rings, according to 9to5Google. If it’s rolled out to you, you can set whether you want the app to announce caller ID every time the phone rings, only when you’re wearing a headset, or never, 9to5Google says. iOS has had a feature like this for some time, and it seems like Google’s version for the Phone app works similarly to Apple’s implementation. On my iPhone, I find caller ID announcements to be really useful — it’s very handy to know who’s calling before I even look at my phone. Caller ID announcements are also a great accessibility feature, allowing people with visual disabilities to more easily know who is calling them. Sadly, most of the call announcements I hear are for spam ca...

Last night, a number of Eufy home security camera owners discovered they were able to access smart camera feeds and saved videos from users they had never met, due to an apparent security glitch. First reported by 9to5Mac, the issue came to light in an extended Reddit thread, in which users from around the world detailed their experiences. “Basically I could see every camera, their front door and backdoor bells, master bedroom, living room, garage, kitchen, their motion recordings, everything,” one Eufy owner noted. “I was wondering what was going on as it still had my email and name as signed in and noticed that some unknown email, I’m guessing of the Hawaii owner, was in my shared guest account.” “For a security product to become completely unsecure, it’s pretty worrying” Some reported t...

The iOS app for conservative-leaning social media platform Parler is back in the Apple App Store today, after what the company says were “months of productive dialogue with Apple.” “The entire Parler team has worked hard to address Apple’s concerns without compromising our core mission,” Parler interim CEO Mark Meckler said in a statement emailed to The Verge on Monday. “Anything allowed on the Parler network but not in the iOS app will remain accessible through our web-based and Android versions. This is a win-win for Parler, its users, and free speech.” Parler, which bills itself as a free speech alternative to Facebook or Twitter, was banned by Apple, Google, and Amazon following the January 6th insurrection at the US Capitol. The companies said Parler had not adequately handled violent...