Technology

Pour one out for the iPod, the beautiful little gadget of my teenage dreams. While Apple finally discontinued the last iPod model this week, the “pod” lives on in the digital audio medium we all love and obsess over. The iPod was never really the format where the podcast flourished (that would be the smartphone), but at the time podcasts were getting started, the iPod was pretty much the only game in town. In 2004, the iPod controlled 60 percent of the total MP3 player market. It was the default option for listening to audio shows on the go, if an inelegant one. In 2004, the iPod dominated the MP3 market “It was a terrible experience,” says Leo Laporte, founder of early digital audio outlet This Week in Tech (TwiT) and host of radio show The Tech Guy. “You had to download it to your comput...

The global chip shortage continues to plague much of the tech industry, and now Samsung is reportedly raising the prices of its microchips for foundry clients by up to 20%. According to a new report from Bloomberg, the South Korean tech giant is now in talks with various clients over price increases for chip-manufacturing contracts, potentially raising prices by 15-20% to reflect the increasing costs of production. The report also cites global instability as one of the reasons, highlighting the war in Ukraine, the COVID-19 lockdown in China, and rising interest rates and inflation across the globe. A spokesperson from Samsung declined to comment, but the move wouldn’t come as a surprise given industry trends over the past year. Both the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and Unite...

For the first time since its debut in 2011, Teenage Engineering has now revamped the iconic OP-1 synthesizer with a series of welcome upgrades. Now with more than a decade of experience and technology under its belt, the Swedish electronics company has reimagined the model, giving the handy device a new name: the OP-1 Field synthesizer. While it retains its mobility with a small form factor, the synthesizer receives an even thinner and slimmer profile along with better, louder speakers. In fact, the team managed to give the OP-1 Field a whopping 100 new features, including Bluetooth midi, stereo throughout its whole signal chain, reworked graphics on its high-resolution glass display, a bumped-up 24-hour battery life, and even FM broadcasting. For the creatives out there interested in Teen...

eBay’s former director of global resiliency, David Harville, pleaded guilty to taking part in a bizarre harassment campaign, which involved sending live cockroaches, spiders, a bloody pig face mask, and other strange items to a Massachusetts couple (via The Guardian). Harville is the last of seven eBay employees to plead guilty to harassing and stalking the pair. In 2020, the Department of Justice (DOJ) charged former eBay employees Harville, James Baugh, Stephanie Popp, Brian Gilbert, Stephanie Stockwell, Veronica Zea, and Philip Cooke with devising a harassment campaign targeting Ina and David Steiner, the publishers behind the EcommerceBytes newsletter. The group’s scheme was meant to intimidate the Steiners over their publication’s negative coverage of eBay. It not only involved harass...

HP’s upcoming 23.8-inch Z24m monitor is geared toward creative professionals and comes with a webcam that tracks your movement to keep you in the frame during video calls, much like Apple’s Center stage feature in its Studio Display and some iPads (via Ars Technica). The Z24m’s 5MP tiltable webcam sits at the top of the monitor, which, as Ars Technica points out, is supposed to put its focus on you even if other people are in the background of the shot. An HP spokesperson also told Ars Technica that you can adjust the webcam’s settings to make it track you quicker. And while you can’t remove the webcam from the monitor, you can push it down to hide it from view. The Z24m also has dual noise-canceling microphones and dual speakers that could eliminate the need to use external headphones and...

Netflix may be expanding into livestreaming. According to a report from Deadline, Netflix is currently working on a livestreaming option for stand-up specials and other live content. As pointed out by Deadline, support for livestreams could open up the possibility for Netflix to air live reunions, like the one recently held by the real estate reality show Selling Sunset, as well as enable live voting for competition shows. Netflix could also use the feature to air live comedy specials. This year, Netflix held its first-ever live and in-person comedy festival, called the Netflix Is a Joke Fest. The Los Angeles-based event spanned several days and featured over 130 popular comedians, including Ali Wong, Bill Burr, Jerry Seinfeld, John Mulaney, and more. Netflix is set to start airing some of...

SteelSeries is running a spring sale promotion that takes up to 40 percent off some of its gaming headsets, mice, and mousepads through Monday, May 23rd. While the discounts on individual items may range, there are some great deals to be had — including some that are available at new all-time lows. The Arctis 7P Plus, for instance, is our pick for the best wireless gaming headset for PlayStation consoles, but it also works with Windows PCs, the Nintendo Switch, smartphones, and the Oculus / Meta Quest 2. While it’s on the premium side and usually retails for about $70 more than Sony’s own Pulse 3D headset, it offers great battery life, USB-C charging, an easy-to-use audio dial, rotatable ear cups that allow for easier storage, and adequate comfort for use during long gaming sessions. It’s ...

Every morning for the last four months, an alert has popped up on my phone between 4AM and 6AM, saying, “First activity of the day detected for Michael at 4:39 AM.” Thankfully, I don’t see it at that time. But later, when I’m actually awake and scrolling through my notifications, it’s a quick mental check telling me that my dad, who lives 300 miles away in Florida, is up and moving around. In January, we started a trial of Alexa Together, a new $19.99 a month service from Amazon that uses its digital assistant to somewhat unobtrusively keep tabs on a consenting family member or loved one. Six months of the service comes bundled with the $130 Echo Show 8, or you can get a 6-month free trial if you already have an Echo device. Using cues from my father’s interactions with Echo speakers and A...

It’s official: the iPod is over. After 20 years, Apple announced this week that it was discontinuing the final product in the brand that defined music players in the mid-2000s and helped catapult Apple to mainstream success. A lot of us at The Verge have fond memories of our days spent using the music players over that two-decade run, so we decided to write some of them down to reflect not just on what a great music player it was but also what an important device it was in our lives at the time. Plus, we’ve got a lot of scars from these things getting destroyed or “going missing.” Here are our memories of buying iPods, rediscovering them, nurturing them back to life, and sometimes just losing them. I have two iPod stories: one about the first one I ever got and another about the last one I...

Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal has released a statement regarding the pause in Elon Musk‘s acquisition of the platform, sharing that while he believes the deal will push through, they will still “need to be prepared for all scenarios.” In a series of tweets, Agrawal addressed the firing of two senior execs — reportedly Twitter’s general manager of consumer products Kayvon Beykpour and general manager of revenue Bruce Falck — following Musk’s public statements about the platform. The CEO explained that despite the possibility of the buyout, these decisions were made for the future of Twitter. “While I expect the deal to close, we need to be prepared for all scenarios and always do what’s right for Twitter,” he tweeted. “I’m accountable for leading and operating Twitter, and our job is to build a...

Yik Yak, an app that acts as a local anonymous message board, makes it possible to find users’ precise locations and unique IDs, Motherboard reports. A researcher who analyzed Yik Yak data was able to access precise GPS coordinates of where posts and comments came from, accurate within 10 to 15 feet, and says he brought his findings to the company in April. First launched in 2013, Yik Yak was popular on college campuses, where it was often used to gossip, post updates, and cyberbully other students. After waning relevance and failed attempts at content moderation, the app shut down in 2017, only to rise from the dead last year. In November, the company said it had passed 2 million users. Motherboard spoke with David Teather, a computer science student based in Madison, Wisconsin, who raise...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal acknowledged the possibility that Elon Musk’s deal to purchase the company could fall through in a series of tweets this afternoon that sought to explain why he’s shaking up Twitter’s leadership. Agrawal said that he’s still “accountable for leading and operating” Twitter for the time being and that his recent changes are meant to “build a stronger Twitter” and help manage costs. “While I expect the deal to close, we need to be prepared for all scenarios and always do what’s right for Twitter,” Agrawal said. His remarks come after Musk tweeted this morning that his $44 billion purchase of Twitter is “temporarily on hold” over concerns about spam and fake accounts. While it is entirely unclear whether Musk can… Continue...