Technology

Filed under: Plus: the new Xbox app on Samsung TVs Share this story Share All sharing options for: Vergecast WWDC: iOS 16, new M2 processor, macOS Ventura, and more

One of the advantages that Chromebooks offer is the ability to run many of your favorite Android apps alongside Chrome OS windows. For the most part, any Chromebook that was launched on or after 2019 will run Android apps; if you’ve got an older system, Google has a long list of the Chromebooks that can run Android apps, but it’s not difficult to see if yours is one of them by doing the following: Go to Settings (click on the clock in the lower-right corner and select the gear icon). Click on the Apps link in the left-hand menu. Click on the Apps link in the Settings menu. In the main window, look for Google Play Store. (It should be near the top.) If it’s there and invites you to Install apps and games from Google Play on your Chromebook, then you’re ready to go. Now, all you have to do i...

In the age of thunderingly loud blockbusters and hyper-serial prestige television, Star Trek has struggled. The J.J. Abrams films tried to reinvent Star Trek for the mega action film era, and Star Trek: Discovery tried to reinvent it for serial TV. And others, like Picard and Lower Decks, have just tried to play to the fans with intense nostalgia and in-jokes. They’ve all been Star Trek, but they haven’t had quite the same impact as the original series or the Star Trek series of the ‘90s. Watching Star Trek: Strange New Worlds feels like watching The Next Generation or Voyager or even The Original Series. It’s Star Trek updated pitch perfectly for 2022, and that’s in large part because it knows what we want: filler episodes. The franchise is enormous at this point — as big as Star Wars or ...

Wyclef Jean is trying his best to get the crowd hyped. He’s making his way through some of the biggest hits of his career — “Hips Don’t Lie,” “Killing Me Softly With His Song” — while blue and green lights sweep across the stadium. But it’s not exactly a wild crowd. Some people stay seated. Others stand still, silently recording the stage. To the side, people take turns tossing bean bags into cornhole boards on top of a carpet of fake grass. Then, it’s like a switch has been flipped. The crowd suddenly erupts in cheers and screams. Phones shoot into the air at rapid speed. People who had otherwise been near-motionless crane their necks, clamoring to see the stage. One man jumps up on top of a folding chair, loses his balance and falls, then scrambles back up for a better view. Jean had sho...

The long-awaited second part of the Final Fantasy VII Remake could be revealed on June 16th, or at least I hope it will. Square Enix’s Twitter account for promoting that game sent out a Save the Date PSA for June 16th at 6PM ET / 3PM PT, when it’ll go live on Twitch and YouTube with a brief 10-minute presentation. It appended “please be excited” to the end, which, I’ll admit, made me excited. Is Part 2 releasing in 2023? Will there be a Part 3? Is the first installment ever going to be released on the Xbox? So many questions. “We will be streaming “FINAL FANTASY VII 25th Anniversary Celebration”. At only around 10 minutes long, it will be short and sweet, but we have packed in lots of information, so I hope everyone can look forward to the unveiling” – Tetsuya Nomura #FFVII25th #FF7R #FF7F...

Disclaimer: All images in this story were generated using artificial intelligence. Every few years, a technology comes along that splits the world neatly into before and after. I remember the first time I saw a YouTube video embedded on a web page; the first time I synced Evernote files between devices; the first time I scanned tweets from people nearby to see what they were saying about a concert I was attending. I remember the first time I Shazam’d a song, summoned an Uber, and streamed myself live using Meerkat. What makes these moments stand out, I think, is the sense that some unpredictable set of new possibilities had been unlocked. What would the web become when you could easily add video clips to it? When you could summon any file to your phone from the cloud? When you could broadc...