Also, I am reliably told we set off a lot of people’s smart speakers with all the Alexa talk, which, sorry about that. But there was a lot of Alexa to talk about on this episode! And Windows, and corporate intrigue, and the future of Xbox, and YouTube AI, and a whole bunch more. Also: Shivers.
Amazon and Microsoft both had big device launches this week — and both were actually big AI launches. What’s next for gadgets, when AI seems to be the present and future of everything? Do you still need a laptop with a plinth? (Spoiler alert: yes. You do.)
We also talk YouTube, Xbox leaks, and Ed Sheeran. Cotton Eye Joe 2.0 is here, and it’s everywhere.
Still on the fence about which iPhone to buy, the 15 or 15 Plus the 15 Pro or 15 Pro Max? Can’t decide if it’s time to double-tap your way to a Watch upgrade? Wondering what the difference is between a homescreen widget and a lockscreen widget and whatever happens in the Dynamic Island and a Live Activity? Well, us too. So that’s all we did on The Vergecast today. We even figured some stuff out.
We’re seeing some genuinely useful-seeming things here! Multi-step routines you can create just by listing tasks for Alexa to accomplished; smart home controls that work no matter how you say the command.
It sounds great! But Amazon has been talking about how easy Alexa makes life for almost a decade now, and ... it doesn’t. At least, not nearly like Amazon’s Charlie French is describing right now. This is a lot of hype for this new LLM-based system to live up to.
“The fastest speeds Eero customers have ever experienced,” we’re told. Two 10GB ethernet ports, 9.4Gbps ethernet speed, and can handle more than 200 connected devices. It starts at $599.99 and comes in packs of one, two, or three. It’s also enormous. But it’s a heck of a router.
