Technology

Even though Apple didn’t announce new iPhones yesterday, the event was a jam-packed hour. Apple announced four new hardware products, a major new service, and a new bundle. By any objective standard, that’s a big day. As I’ll note below, the most important products might not be the hardware, but Fitness Plus and the ability to make an Apple Watch a kid tracker. Besides those announcements, the main thing that struck me is that Apple seems to be making a subtle but important shift in its product strategy this year. You may have heard of the “Good, Better, Best” pricing strategy — it’s been applied to Apple a bunch. I think what Apple is doing this year is making the “better” option …better — and also a little more expensive. It’s the “better better” model. The old among us have Steve ...

Apple, the world’s most valuable company, is currently under assault by Fortnite developer Epic Games in an incredible legal and cultural fight, but Epic was hardly the first to accuse Apple of abusing monopolistic power. Today, Spotify — the music service whose complaints helped launch two official EU antitrust investigations into Apple’s App Store and Apple Pay practices — has taken offense at Apple’s announcement of an all-in-one subscription bundle that includes its rival Apple Music. Here’s Spotify’s statement: Once again, Apple is using its dominant position and unfair practices to disadvantage competitors and deprive consumers by favoring its own services. We call on competition authorities to act urgently to restrict Apple’s anti-competitive behavior, which if left unchecked, will ...

Earlier this year, my colleague Cameron Faulkner reviewed the Razer Kishi, a smartly designed game controller for Android phones created in collaboration with Gamevice. Now a version for iPhones is here, and it’s essentially the same story — the biggest difference is what it can do. The Kishi is like two Nintendo Switch Joy-Cons that are permanently attached to each other, collapsing down into an easily portable package. The band between them is elasticized, meaning you can pull them over the edges of your phone and get a snug fit. The iOS version has a Lightning connector on one end and a port for passthrough charging. I tried it with an iPhone 11, but it also comes with adapters for smaller phones like the SE. Verge Score 7 out of 10 Good Stuff Convenient, portable design Easy to attach ...

One way to avoid having your repetitive pro-Trump posts tagged as belonging to a bot is to hire teenagers in Arizona to behave like bots — and that’s exactly what The Washington Post reports conservative group Turning Point Action did. These kids posted messages such as “Don’t trust Dr. Fauci” to Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, the Post reported. They echoed President Donald Trump’s disdain for mail-in ballots, and posted erroneous claims about voter fraud, using the repetitive posting behavior that is most common in bots or trolls. “In this election, the troll farm is in Phoenix.” The campaign occurred over the course of months, and the Post identified at least 4,500 tweets that came from the Turning Point Action effort. “In 2016, there were Macedonian teenagers interfering in the electi...

AT&T is mulling offering wireless phone plans that would be subsidized in part by ads, CEO John Stankey said in an interview with Reuters. “I believe there’s a segment of our customer base where given a choice, they would take some load of advertising for a $5 or $10 reduction in their mobile bill,” Stankey said. The new plans could be offered beginning in “a year or two,” according to Stankey. Is this what healthy wireless industry competition looks like? AT&T has experimented with at least one form of brand-subsidized phone plan in the past, though it didn’t exactly pass along the savings to you. The “Sponsored Data” program, which was announced back in 2014, let brands pay AT&T so they could deliver their content without counting against your data cap. This sounds like it wo...

The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air’s first episode aired 30 years ago this month, and to celebrate the milestone, Airbnb is allowing people to spend the night in the same mansion used in the popular 90s sitcom — but only if you are a resident in Los Angeles County. Starting September 29th, residents will have the chance to spend $30 to spend one night in the freshest mansion in Los Angeles County with one additional person. Residents can select from one of five available dates: October 2nd, October 5th, October 8th, October 11th, and October 14th. In case you didn’t know already, I was born in the mid-90s, so even though I was very young when the show originally aired, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air was syndicated on a ton of TV channels. There was Carlton’s goofy dance, the snarkiness from the butl...

Apple made an American Sign Language translation of its “Time Flies” event available on its website on Tuesday (via AppleInsider). There are two screens in the ASL-translated event replay — the left one shows the event video, while the one on the right shows someone translating what’s being said in ASL. Apple is already well-known for its accessibility features in its products. iOS 14, the company’s next major iPhone update, gives users some significant improvements. It can alert you when your iPhone picks up certain sounds such as a dog’s bark, for example. Another new feature lets you double- or triple-tap the back of your phone to perform a custom task. And if you’re using sign language while on a group FaceTime call, iOS 14 can detect that and make your window more prominent for other ...

President Donald Trump has nominated longtime telecom lawyer Nathan Simington to be the Federal Communications Commission’s next commissioner, as reported by Law360. Last week, The Verge first reported that Simington had emerged as a leading candidate to replace current Republican Commissioner Mike O’Rielly. Simington, a senior adviser at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), played a significant role in drafting a petition required under the Trump administration’s social media executive order issued over the summer. The order instructs the FCC, after receiving NTIA’s petition, to reinterpret Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. The order was issued in May after Twitter fact-checked two of Trump’s tweets that made false statements about mail-in vo...

Nintendo has announced the next round of games to be added to the ever-growing Nintendo Switch Online retro library. The headliner is Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest, the 1995 sequel to the original Donkey Kong Country that was added to Nintendo Switch Online back in July. I will be straight with you and admit that I am not a Donkey Kong Country fan. But I am a Picross fan, so I’m excited for the next addition: Mario’s Super Picross, a 1995 SNES game that has never been released in the US. (It did see release on the Wii and Wii U Virtual Console in PAL regions, though.) If you’re not a Picross player already, Nintendo has posted a tutorial for Mario’s Super Picross here: [embedded content] The other additions this month are Jaleco’s 1993 SNES beat-em-up The Peace Keepers and Nats...

During today’s “Time Flies” event, Apple explained why it has decided to stop including a power adapter in the box with the latest Apple Watch Series 6 and Apple Watch SE, portraying the move as a big step toward meeting the company’s environmental goals. But it turns out this change doesn’t apply to every new Apple Watch; the most expensive models will still come with a 5-watt charger. Both the titanium Apple Watch Edition and high-fashion Apple Watch Hermès will include a power adapter in the box, according to Apple’s website. (Credit to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman for spotting this.) Apple sells far fewer Edition and Hermès Watches than it does the more mainstream models, so it follows that the reduced volume makes for less waste. But isn’t it also relatively safe to assume that anyone spen...

Photo: Tina Tyrell for New York Magazine. Set design by Eric Mestman. Photography assistance by Matt Shrier. This article was featured in One Great Story, New York’s reading recommendation newsletter. Sign up here to get it nightly. My mother’s ex-husband, Jim (who, until I turned 8, I’d thought was my uncle), had Google alerts set for me. Every time my name appeared in the news — if you can call gossip websites “news” — he was notified immediately via email. Jim was well meaning but an alarmist; he wished to maintain a relationship with me, and these alerts provided him with perfect opportunities to reach out. I was walking through Tompkins Square Park with a friend and her dog and sipping a coffee when Jim’s name lit up my phone. “See you’re getting sued. My advice …” he began. Jim was a...

Apple launched new Apple Watch bands today that have no buckles or clasps, called the Solo Loop and the Braided Solo Loop. They look nice, but because you won’t be able to adjust the length of the band, you’ll have to measure your wrist in some way when you’re buying one to make sure you’re picking the right size. And that problem becomes trickier due to the fact that there are 12 total Loop sizes to pick from. Apple has a few solutions to help you pick a good fit, however. The company has a printable measuring cutout on its website that you can use to figure out which Loop band you should buy. Alternatively, if you’re able to measure your wrist in some other way (perhaps with measuring tape, for example), you can plug in your measurements on Apple’s online store for a recommendation on wh...