Apple’s latest AirPods Pro are cheaper than the AirPods 4 right now

Deals this good rarely stick around.

Black Friday and AirPods discounts go together like, well, AirPods and iPhones. We thought the latest AirPods Pro were an incredible deal at their recently discounted price of $189, but they’ve dropped even further at Amazon and Walmart, where you can now pick them up for a new low of $153.99 ($95 off). That’s less than the current price for the AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation, which are down to $168.99.

Sure, the AirPods 4 are newer, but Apple was mostly playing catchup with their release. The second-gen AirPods Pro are still the best wireless earbuds in Apple’s lineup, even a couple of years after their initial release. Their voice call quality is fantastic and their noise cancellation performance is more effective than...

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Wear OS 5.1 could let you play music on your built-in Android watch speakers

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Google is testing out media playback straight from Android smartwatches’ built-in speakers in Wear OS 5.1, according to Android developer release notes spotted by Mishaal Rahman. That’s in addition to adding support for credential managers in the coming update, which Google revealed is based on Android 15. (Wear OS 5, which rolled out earlier this month, is based on Android 14.)

Watch speaker playback will work for “devices that support media playback through the watch speaker,” Google writes, adding that users can pick the built-in speaker for apps that include the capability. It’s not clear which devices that would mean.

Android smartwatches only play media over Bluetooth right now — something that was true of all Apple Watches u...

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BioWare veteran’s studio shuts down before releasing a game

Image: Humanoid Origin

Humanoid Origin, the game studio founded by former BioWare general manager Casey Hudson, is shutting down operations. The closure was announced in a post on the company’s LinkedIn page. “Despite efforts to shield the studio from broader challenges in the industry, an unexpected shortfall of funding left us unable to sustain operations,” the post read.

Humanoid Origin was founded by Hudson in 2021 when it was then known as Humanoid Studios. Hudson started the studio after leaving a 20-year career at BioWare where he worked as a producer and director on several of the studio’s seminal titles including Mass Effect and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Hudson left BioWare in 2014 for a brief stint at Microsoft Studios before returning...

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The small thing that can keep drivers attentive while using partial automation

Image: Ford

With more cars equipped with partial automation hitting the road, safety researchers are growing increasingly worried about driver attention and the potential for these systems to cause crashes. A new survey has a possible solution to the problem of wandering attention while using partial automation: let drivers adjust the steering.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) conducted a new study that found that drivers were more likely to stay alert while using advanced driver-assist systems (ADAS) when they were allowed to correct the steering without disengaging the partial automation.

“These results suggest that small differences in system design can nudge drivers toward safer habits,” said IIHS president David Harkey in a...

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Anker’s 8-in-1 charging station is nearly half off

Anker’s orb-like charging stand can power up eight devices, including iPhones, for just $56. | Image: Nathan Edwards / The Verge

If you’re tired of cluttering up your desk with multiple chargers, check out Anker’s MagGo Magnetic Charging Station 8-in-1, because it can probably replace all of them. It’s one of our favorite MagSafe chargers precisely because it can power up eight devices at a time, and right now is down to an all-time low of $55.99 ($44 off) at Amazon for Black Friday. You can also purchase it at the same price directly from Anker when you apply the promo code WS7DV2NMENHH.

Anker’s orb-like charger is capable of quickly delivering Qi2 speeds (15 watts) of power to MagSafe-compatible iPhones. Yet it’s also a power strip, one that supports up to 67 watts total power output and features a pair of USB-C as well as USB-A ports, along with three AC...

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Huawei’s Mate 70 smartphones will run its new Android-free OS

Huawei’s new Mate 70 lineup will be the first to offer the company’s HarmonyOS Next that isn’t compatible with Android apps. | Image: Huawei

Huawei has announced its new Mate 70 series smartphone lineup, which will be the first offered with the company’s new HarmonyOS Next operating system that doesn’t rely on Google’s Android services and won’t run any Android apps, according to a report by Reuters. The four models of the Mate 70 also don’t feature any US hardware following a half decade of US sanctions.

The Mate 70, Mate 70 Pro, Mate 70 Pro Plus, and Mate 70 RS will also be offered with Huawei’s HarmonyOS 4.3, which first launched in August 2019 as an alternative to Google’s Android OS and is still compatible with Android’s extensive app library. Users who decide to opt for Huawei’s new Android-free HarmonyOS Next will have less choice when it comes to the apps they can...

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Star Wars: Skeleton Crew is premiering a day early

Disney Plus / Lucasfilm Ltd.

While there were only a few days left until Star Wars: Skeleton Crew was slated to debut on Disney Plus, the streamer has decided to bump the premiere up just a smidge.

Today, Disney announced that rather than dropping on December 3rd, Star Wars: Skeleton Crew will premiere a day earlier on December 2nd with two episodes. Along with the announcement, Disney also posted a new trailer teasing how younglings Wim (Ravi Cabot-Conyers), Neel (Robert Timothy Smith), KB (Kyriana Kratter), and Fern (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) get swept up in the adventure of a lifetime with Jod Na Nawood (Jude Law) as their Force-sensitive guide.

Though some of the trailer’s big set pieces feel like classic Star Wars in terms of spectacle, it also emphasizes how S...

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Microsoft is killing off its Xbox One-era Avatars in January

Xbox Avatar as seen in the Microsoft’s October 2018 Xbox Update video. | Screenshot: YouTube

Microsoft is shutting down the Xbox Avatar Editor app, reports PureXbox. The Xbox Avatar FAQ says that “due to low engagement and our shift in focus towards delivering other player experiences,” it’s discontinuing the editor as of January 9th, 2025.

After that time, players won’t be able to access their Avatars or the items they’ve bought for them. The company will automatically refund users for any of those items they’ve bought since November 1st, 2023.

GIF: Xbox Avatar Editor

Xbox Avatar Editor, as it appeared in its June 2018 testing period.

Xbox Avatars, which Microsoft first rolled out in 2018, offered more diverse, detailed avatar creation than what had been available on the Xbox 360. Players can still...

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Rivian gets $6.6 billion government loan to build its EV factory in Georgia

Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images

The US Department of Energy will loan Rivian $6.6 billion to build an electric vehicle factory in Georgia, as Democrats scramble to finalize their climate agenda before Donald Trump takes office.

Rivian, lacking the funds to start the construction process, put its Georgia factory plans on hold earlier this year. The company has lost a significant amount of money since its public offering in November 2021, including $1.1 billion this past quarter. The company recently said it expected to lose up to $2.88 billion in adjusted earnings for the year, up from the previous guidance of $2.7 billion in losses. And it has gone through several rounds of layoffs over the past two years.

Rivian said it received “conditional commitment” for its...

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The influencer lawsuit that could change the industry

Photo by Liam James Doyle for The Verge

One Amazon influencer makes a living posting content from her beige home. But after she noticed another account hocking the same minimal aesthetic, a rivalry spiraled into a first-of-its-kind lawsuit. Can the legal system protect the vibe of a creator? And what if that vibe is basic?

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How to use Google Gemini on your phone

Image: The Verge

While Google Assistant is going to be around for a while, the future of Google-powered digital assistants now seems to be Gemini. Gemini comes preinstalled if you buy a Google Pixel 9 phone, and you can install the Android app on older Pixels and non-Pixel handsets. There’s also now an app for the iPhone.

Whether you’ve already got it installed or you’re thinking about upgrading from Google Assistant, here’s what you can do with Gemini. (This was tested on a Pixel 9 Pro Fold.)

Pay or not?

You can grab the Gemini app for free for Android and iOS, sign yourself in with your Google account, and switch. As with Gemini on the web, the model you can access will depend on whether you’re willing to pay Google $20 a month for Google One AI...

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DJI’s new wireless mics skip a few features to get smaller and lighter

When paired with a charging case, the DJI Mic Mini system can work for up to 48 hours. | Image: DJI

DJI has announced its next wireless microphone system, the Mic Mini, which shrinks all the hardware while improving battery life. The new microphones weigh less than half of what the more expensive DJI Mic 2’s transmitters do, but the new system sacrifices useful features like built-in backup recording and the option to connect an even smaller lav mic in the name of improving portability.

Although the DJI Mic Mini seems like an improvement over the DJI Mic 2 system in many ways, it’s not a replacement. The Mic Mini transmitters lack the ability to record backup audio on their own. If that’s a concern, you’ll need to rely on your recording software, such as DJI’s Mimo app, which can capture a second safety track at a lower volume to...

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Intel awarded almost $8 billion in bid to protect US chipmaking interests

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge

The Biden administration is giving Intel $7.865 billion in CHIPS Act funding to boost domestic semiconductor manufacturing in the US. The agreement confirmed by the US Department of Commerce today is the largest award granted under the CHIPS Act to date, though notably smaller than the up to $8.5 billion earmarked for the chip maker in March.

“Today’s award marks another key step in implementing President Biden’s CHIPS and Science Act and the Investing in America agenda to reshore manufacturing, create thousands of good-paying jobs, and strengthen our economy,” White House Deputy Chief of Staff Natalie Quillian said in the announcement.

The confirmed CHIPS investment will be put towards building and expanding Intel’s semiconductor...

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Video leaks of Samsung’s curvier Galaxy S25 Ultra flagship

The edges of the leaked Galaxy S25 Ultra look much softer than the current S24 Ultra flagship. | Image: 1gzlim3 / Reddit

The Samsung Galaxy S25 series is poised to launch in early 2025, but a new leak gives us a good idea of what it will look like. A misleadingly titled “S24 Ultra definitely” video posted to Reddit, determined to be the Galaxy S25 Ultra by reliable leaker Ice Universe, shows off rounded corners not found on Samsung’s current flagship smartphones, backing up previous leaks and rumors.

The rounded corners also echo the rounder UI elements found in the upcoming One UI 7 software update that Samsung will soon be rolling out. Other features seen in the hands-on video include a glossy finish, metallic-looking edges, and Samsung’s recognizable rear camera setup — all of which were also seen in supposed Galaxy S25 Ultra dummy units that leaked...

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The Verge’s 2024 holiday gift guide

Photo: Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

A collection of fun, affordable, and unique gifts fit for everyone on your list.

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US v. Google redux: all the news from the ad tech trial

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images

Google and the government recently wrapped their search antitrust case, which ended in a judge finding Google to be a monopolist.

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The best Black Friday deals on AirPods, MacBooks, and other Apple tech

Apple’s latest AirPods Pro are some of our favorite wireless earbuds — and they’re currently on sale for just $154. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

Since the beginning of November, Amazon and other retailers have been releasing a steady drip of early Black Friday deals. However, now that we’re officially just a few days out from the main event, it feels like there are more deals than ever — and they’re getting better by the day.

Surprisingly, some of the best deals currently available are on Apple devices. Right now, for instance, the latest AirPods Pro and second-gen Apple Watch SE have already dropped to their lowest prices to date. There are also steep discounts to be had on iPads, MacBooks, Apple Pencils, MagSafe-compatible chargers, and other accessories.

To make sorting through the various discounts easier, we’ve organized the deals below based on category. It’s always...

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Zoom 2.0 relaunches as an AI-first company without video in its name

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Zoom is changing its name from Zoom Video Communications Inc. to just Zoom Communications Inc. In a post on the company blog, Zoom Communications CEO Eric Yuan writes that Zoom is now an “AI-first work platform for human connection” that delivers “modern, hybrid work solutions.” It’s a muddy, if vague, change compared to its 2020 rise when the classic Zoom Meetings product became synonymous with video conferencing and thrived as companies were forced to transition employees to work from home.

Now, it no longer wants to be known for video as workers have returned to offices, and bigger, better-resourced competition from Google, Microsoft, and Slack offers video as a feature of the office suites companies already pay for.

Allow us to...

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Drake says UMG and Spotify used bots and payola to make ‘Not Like Us’ seem popular

Photo by Prince Williams/Wireimage

Musically speaking, I’d say Drake lost the tit-for-tat feud this year between himself and Kendrick Lamar, which culminated in Lamar’s hit song “Not Like Us.” But Drake (real name: Aubrey Graham) doesn’t seem to want to accept defeat that easily. In a petition filed in New York’s state Supreme Court on Monday, Drake is accusing Universal Music Group — the label that’s represented him for his entire career and also represents Lamar — and Spotify of shady business practices aimed at making “Not Like Us” more of a hit than it already was:

In 2024, UMG did not rely on chance, or even ordinary business practices, to “break through the noise” on Spotify, and likely other music platforms. It instead launched a campaign to manipulate and...

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Google and the DOJ make their final arguments in the ad tech monopoly case

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images

Google and the Department of Justice met one final time in an Alexandria, Virginia courtroom to debate the future of Google’s online ad tech juggernaut.

Over about three hours of closing arguments, attorneys for each sidedelivered their last arguments before US District Court judge Leonie Brinkema, who is expected to rule on it by the end of 2024. If she declares Google’s ad tech system a monopoly, the case will progress to a second trial for remedies — a process currently playing out in a separate DC District Court case over Google search.

Many of the arguments were familiar to any Google trial watcher. The DOJ argues Google used a suite of ad tech products, particularly Doubleclick For Publishers (DFP) and the AdX exchange, to s...

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Google is inserting search links into webpages in the Google App now

Illustration: The Verge

The Google App for iOS can automatically convert some website text into links to Google Search results, as announced in a community post that SERoundtable spotted.

Google calls the feature “Page Annotations” and says it “extracts interesting entities from the webpage and highlights them in line,” which can then take you out to Search results when you tap them — inserting links without explicitly asking the user or the site owner first. It seems like a curious move for a company embroiled in antitrust fights over both its search and advertising businesses.

Image: Google

A screenshot shows what the links, er, “Page Annotations” look like.

Google has a form for web publishers to opt out of the links. According to...

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YouTube shares a final blog post from Susan Wojcicki on fighting lung cancer

Photo: Dennis Troper (Facebook)

YouTube has shared a final blog post from Susan Wojcicki, the company’s former CEO and one of Google’s earliest employees, detailing her unexpected diagnosis and two-year battle with lung cancer. Wojcicki wrote the message in the last weeks of her life and had planned to publish it this fall, according to YouTube CEO Neal Mohan. Wojcicki died unexpectedly in August.

In the blog post, Wojcicki discusses life with the disease, along with her efforts to support cancer research, both before and after her diagnosis. Wojcicki writes that women die from lung cancer more than any other cancer and says that two-thirds of non-smokers diagnosed with the disease are women.

Her message begins:

At the end of 2022, I was diagnosed with lung cancer. I...

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I have some notes on Sam Altman’s note-taking advice

A gadget with no subscription fee and no terms of service.

Nilay’s main love language is trolling, and so he sent me this video of Sam Altman talking about note-taking, because he knew it would annoy me.

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A post shared by FORTUNE (@fortunemag)

Now I recognize there is a school of thought which will say something like “Whatever it is that will get you to successfully take notes is correct.” This is true if you are some kind of loser who doesn’t care about pens and paper, in which case, vaya con dios I guess.

Let’s start with what Altman is doing right: physically writing stuff down. I love my colleague David Pierce, but he is hideously wrong about basically every productivity tool because he insists on using a computer. At this...

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Meta’s mixed-reality attempt at a Wii Sports knockoff is coming

Home Sports remembers that bowling was the best part of Wii Sports. | Image: Meta

A new game called Home Sports is coming to the Meta Quest 3 and 3S on December 11th, and from its aesthetic to its music, this $19.99 title is clearly trying to be the Wii Sports (or Nintendo Switch Sports if you like) for mixed reality.

Images: Meta / Nintendo

That logo looks very familiar.

Like Nintendo’s simplistic motion control-based sports series, Home Sports offers several games: hockey, badminton, pickleball, mini-golf, and bowling. It’s playable solo and multiplayer, where your Meta avatar represents you in a match. Meta says the game can adapt to your play space, but it also uses the Quest boundaryless mode for those with access to wide-open spaces.

A blatant knockoff of Nintendo’s Sports seriesit...

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Anthropic launches tool to connect AI systems directly to datasets

Image: The Verge

Anthropic has released a new open-source tool to connect AI assistants directly to the information they need to inform their responses or carry out tasks. The new Model Context Protocol (MCP) provides a universal connection to all sorts of data sources, which Anthropic says will improve performance.

Earlier this month, OpenAI started testing a new “Work with Apps” feature that lets the Mac version of ChatGPT directly connect to certain coding apps. Anthropic’s tool, on the other hand, aims to work across all AI systems and data sources.

As noted by Alex Albert, Anthropic’s head of Claude relations, developers currently have to create custom code for each dataset they want their AI model to draw from. With Anthropic’s MCP, Albert says...

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The best Black Friday gaming deals you can shop right now

Console deals like one that takes $75 off a Switch OLED are in rare abundance, and there’s even more to shop. | Image: Nintendo

Black Friday is brimming with great deals on new games, including older titles you can purchase for pennies on the dollar and recent hits that might be hard to justify at full price. You can usually find great deals on gaming accessories, too, from controllers and headsets to expanded storage for consoles like the Xbox Series X / S.

We’ve combed through all of the early Black Friday gaming deals to bring together the best of the bunch in one convenient spot_._ Tons of games are discounted right now, as we’re seeing the lowest prices to date on recent hits like Astro Bot and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. You can also find discounts on lesser-known gems like Metaphor: ReFantazio, which is on sale for $40 in one of its first...

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GM has a deal to bring a new Cadillac F1 team to the grid

GM design rendering of the Cadillac Formula 1 Team concept. | Image: GM

General Motors has a deal to join Formula 1 under the Cadillac brand and participate in the FIA Formula One World Championship for the 2026 season, the automaker announced on Monday. Formula 1 says it has accepted in principle and will move GM and Cadillac's application forward to become the 11th team on the grid — making it the first new team to join since 2016.

Formula 1 says it’s been in talks with GM and its partners at motorsport company TWG Global about “the viability of an entry following the commercial assessment and decision” the organization made in January. The announcement mentions that GM will come on as an engine supplier later, and while The Race reports it will join initially as a Ferrari customer, that has not been...

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UN climate negotiations were a major bummer

Activists protest against fossil fuels and for climate finance on day 11 at the UNFCCC COP29 climate conference on November 22nd, 2024, in Baku, Azerbaijan. | Photo by Sean Gallup / Getty Images

Maybe it was the host of the UN climate summit in Azerbaijan this month calling oil and gas a “gift of God.” Or the US, the world’s biggest oil and gas producer, reelecting a president who says “we don’t have a global warming problem” just before the conference. Then again, the biggest outcome — or disappointment, depending on how you look at it — was an incremental increase in the amount of climate aid wealthier nations committed to less affluent countries dealing with the consequences of other people’s pollution.

“We have seen the very worst of political opportunism”

Any way you look at it, the summit (called the Conference of the Parties, or COP) that fizzed out over the weekend was exasperating, particularly for delegates from parts...

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iPhone 17 ‘Slim’ rumors are still floating around

It’s no iPhone 13 Mini (pictured above), but maybe the 17 “Slim” will capture a bit of the small phone magic anyway. | Image: Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Apple engineers are wrestling with where to put the SIM card, battery, and thermal materials in the rumored iPhone 17 “Slim,” according to The Information. Although US iPhones haven’t had SIM cards for a couple of years now, they’re required to in China, making it a tricky, but necessary hurdle to get over.

The 17 Slim’s single, center-mounted camera will reportedly be surrounded by a rectangular bump that’s made of aluminum instead of glass. It also says the iPhone Plus will leave the lineup, something that’s been rumored off and on alongside whispers about this new phone.

Other rumors around the 17 Slim (or Air, or whatever Apple names it) include that it will feature a 6.6-inch (or 6.55-inch) display and an aluminum frame. It could...

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Dr Disrespect veers right into Rumble

Photo by Matt Thomas/San Diego Padres/Getty Images

Rumble, the video streaming platform that’s become the home for right-wing personalities like Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, and Tim Pool as well as full-throated racists like Nick Fuentes, has a new member joining its ranks: Dr Disrespect. The streamer announced the news via social media and Rumble confirmed it in a press release, stating that the streamer will provide a mix of free and paid content for the platform as well as “acting as an advisor and helping to build the Rumble Gaming community.”

The move to Rumble is the latest development in the Dr Disrespect streaming saga that began four years ago. In 2020, Dr Disrespect, whose real name is Herschel “Guy” Beahm, was banned from Twitch with little explanation mere months after...

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