Technology

After 14 years, three revisions, and two different processor architectures, the iconic wedge shape of the MacBook Air is now history. In its place is a MacBook Air with a completely new design that’s the same thickness from front to back. Virtually every aspect of the new MacBook Air has been updated or changed — it’s the biggest update to the Air since it originally debuted nearly a decade and a half ago. These kinds of changes are a big deal because the Air is the default laptop option for millions of people. Beyond that, the Air sets the standard for thin and light laptops that every other manufacturer chases. In addition to the design and hardware changes, this new Air has Apple’s latest in-house processor, the M2. It also comes with a higher price tag — it starts at $1,199, $200 more ...

A few of us at The Verge have noticed something new about Twitter’s iOS app: when you pull down to refresh your feed, you might hear a couple of new noises. One is a little windup trill that plays when you first pull the feed, and after your feed is done refreshing, you might hear a short confirmation chirp. (Though the sounds are more robotic than any real-life bird I’ve heard.) I made a recording so you can hear what I’m hearing. It’s a little different from the short “pop” you might have heard when refreshing before. We’re not exactly sure when the change kicked in, but we first noticed it Friday afternoon, and we’ve seen a bunch of tweets about the new chirp from Friday as well. There are also a handful of tweets mentioning a chirp over the past couple of weeks, which could mean that T...

Elon Musk’s legal team has responded to Twitter’s lawsuit against him, saying that the company is demanding an unreasonably fast trial. In response, Musk’s team asks that the case not be heard until next year, according to Bloomberg. Twitter has pushed for the trial to take place in mid-September, justifying the request to expedite things given that Musk and Twitter’s merger agreement has an October 24th “presumptive drop-dead date.” However, Musk’s team is asking that the trial not be held until February 13th, 2023 trial at the earliest, Bloomberg reports. Twitter declined to comment on the matter, and pointed to its initial complaint filed Tuesday. Twitter sued Musk earlier this week after he officially tried to bail on his $44 billion agreement to buy the company. Nearly immediately aft...

The Sims 4 is making it easier for players to create Sims that better reflect their lived experiences. As a free update coming at the end of the month along with the High School Years expansion, players can now choose their Sims’ sexual orientation and romantic / sexual attraction. It works like this: within the “Create a Sim” function, you’ll be able to fiddle with how your Sim experiences sex and romance. First, you can choose if your character is attracted to men or women. The Sims 4 team is aware that making this choice based on binary options isn’t ideal. “I understand that there will be concerns here around the initial options being gender binary,” SimGuruJessica, the design lead on the High School Years expansion wrote in the developer diary. “Mechanically, non binary Sims don’t yet...

ESPN is raising the price of its standalone ESPN Plus streaming service from $6.99 per month to $9.99 per month, a nearly 43 percent increase, beginning August 23rd, as reported earlier by Sports Business Journal. The price of the annual plan is also going up from $69.99 to $99.99. If you get your streaming ESPN service as a part of the Disney bundle, however, which packages Disney Plus, ESPN Plus, and ad-supported Hulu for $13.99 per month (including Hulu without ads takes the price to $19.99 per month), that will remain at the same price as before. The service’s website and support pages haven’t been updated to reflect the increase yet, but a statement sent over by Disney spokesperson Paul Melvin indicates subscribers will be notified next week. The price change reflects how even as movi...

Halo Infinite’s network campaign co-op test flight is finally live, developer 343 Industries announced Friday. As part of the test, you’ll be able to play the campaign with up to three of your friends, and the game supports crossplay across Xbox One, Xbox Series X / S, and PC. The test also includes a mission replay feature, which wasn’t included with the game at launch. Before you jump onto Zeta Halo with your friends, you should know that you’ll be starting the campaign from scratch in this test. Any progress you’ve made in the retail build of the game won’t carry over, and anything you accomplish in the test won’t show up in your retail build, either. But if it’s been a while since you played through Halo Infinite’s campaign, starting fresh with your pals could be a fun reason to revisi...

After two years of being canceled due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, San Diego Comic-Con’s coming back this year with a vengeance and a sizable stack of announcements, trailer drops, and early screenings of some of the entertainment industry’s most hyped projects. While there’s almost no way to see absolutely everything that’s going down during this year’s SDCC, knowing where and when some of the convention’s biggest panels are taking place is a solid way to get the most out of your time if you’re on the con floor (or just following along from home). Here are all of the biggest film and television panels happening at SDCC 2022 that news-hungry fans are going to want to keep an eye on. Thursday, July 21st Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (12PM PT to 1PM PT, Hall H) The cast an...

Just a few days ahead of World Emoji Day on Sunday, July 17, Emojipedia has released a draft list and samples for all of the new emojis in Emoji 15.0 for iOS and Android devices. While the emojis are subject to change before the final version launches in September, Emojipedia noted that the majority of draft emojis end up in the final version. Every emoji previewed in its Emoji 14.0 list ultimately made the update in 2021, however, “actual vendor designs will vary from those released by major vendors,” the site said. New emojis that users can expect on their keyboards in 2022 includes a shaking face, a plain pink heart and a high-five. Following the standard emoji face design, the shaking face is blurred by its movement from side to side and will likely be used to indicate shock. While the...

Meta has unveiled Make-A-Scene, an AI research tool that uses sketches and text to produce new artwork. Shared by Mark Zuckerberg, the tool is designed to give creative control to anyone, artists and non-artists. Most AI systems rely solely on text prompts to generate images, but due to the limitations of text, it’s often difficult to predict how the image will turn out. Make-A-Scene, meanwhile, allows users to “convey their vision with greater specificity, using a variety of elements, forms, arrangements, depth, compositions, and structures,” a post on Meta’s AI blog reads. “This multimodal generative AI method puts creative control in the hands of people who use it by allowing them to describe and illustrate their vision through both text descriptions and freeform sketches.” The system f...

If you need something more powerful than the new M2-powered MacBook Air, last year’s 16-inch MacBook Pro is available on Amazon right now for its lowest price to date. Regularly $2,499.00, Amazon is selling the M1-powered model with a 10‑core CPU, 16‑core GPU, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB SSD for $2,249 — a price Best Buy is currently matching. We were very impressed with the 16-inch machine, which offers a Mini LED display that the new MacBook Air lacks and fantastic performance that makes it the most powerful laptop we’ve ever tested for content creation and creative work. The laptop also boasts some of the longest battery life we’ve seen. Plus, the port selection is terrific; whereas the MacBook Air only allows for one external display, you can use the 16-inch MacBook Pro with three external ...

If you need something more powerful than the new M2-powered MacBook Air, last year’s 16-inch MacBook Pro is available on Amazon right now for its lowest price to date. Regularly $2,499.00, Amazon is selling the M1-powered model with a 10‑core CPU, 16‑core GPU, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB SSD for $2,249 — a price Best Buy is currently matching. We were very impressed with the 16-inch machine, which offers a Mini LED display that the new MacBook Air lacks and fantastic performance that makes it the most powerful laptop we’ve ever tested for content creation and creative work. The laptop also boasts some of the longest battery life we’ve seen. Plus, the port selection is terrific; whereas the MacBook Air only allows for one external display, you can use the 16-inch MacBook Pro with three external ...