Processor Newsletter | The Verge

Spotify is increasing US prices again

2024-06-03T06:34:46-04:00

A year after Spotify first increased the price of Spotify Premium in the US, it's happening again. Next month subscribers to Spotify in the US will start receiving an email detailing the price increases to Premium, Duo, and Family plans. Spotify Premium will now cost $11.99 a month, up from the $10.99 increase announced last year.

If you're a subscriber to Spotify Duo then it's jumping $2 a month, from $14.99 to $16.99 a month. Family will also increase from $16.99 a month to $19.99 a month. That means the price of a Spotify Duo subscription has jumped by 30 percent in a year, compared to prices before last year's hike. Spotify Family has a …

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NASA moves next Artemis I rocket launch attempt to September 3rd

2022-08-30T22:32:04-04:00

Clear your plans on Saturday: NASA says we're going to have a rocket launch.

The space agency moved the date for the next Artemis I rocket launch attempt to Saturday, September 3rd, after determining that the initial plan for Friday was going to run into bad weather.

There was a 60 percent chance that the launch would have been delayed for weather on Friday, officials said during a media briefing. The two-hour launch window opens at 2:17PM.

This will be NASA's second attempt this week at launching its massive next-generation rockets. The first attempted launch on Monday was scrubbed after one of the four RS-25 engines failed to reach the …

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A heartfelt farewell

2022-03-04T13:00:00-05:00

Ten years after we founded it, The Verge continues to be the best place to discover the import and impact of technology's place in our culture - but after today, the team will be doing that without me. After 20 years in media, I've decided it's time to do something new. If you've been a Vergecast listener, you know that disclosure is our brand, so here's mine: I'm headed to Google to work on the Platforms & Ecosystems team. I am excited to help shape the future of software platforms like Android and Chrome - and continue to work at the nexus of technology and culture, just in a different way.

(An even fuller disclosure: even as you read the …

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Apple isn’t just a walled garden, it’s a carrier

2021-06-07T07:00:00-04:00

As we await the beginning of Apple's latest WWDC keynote and all of the new software products it will unveil, let's talk about metaphors. Specifically, the metaphors we use to talk about Apple's ecosystem. The go-to for years has been that it's a "walled garden" - here's Joanna Stern at The Wall Street Journal making that case in a literal walled garden - but I'm not sure that's the best one anymore.

It's worth kicking around some different ways of describing Apple's ecosystem in this moment because of the nature of keynotes - even online-only keynotes. Apple is the master of crafting narratives around its products that become an organizing …

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With the Samsung Galaxy S21, it’s time for Bixby to put up or shut up

2021-01-14T07:00:00-05:00

Today, Samsung will unveil the Galaxy S21, Galaxy S21 Plus, and Galaxy S21 Ultra (I'll take the Zune-inspired brown one thanks). It's happening a couple months earlier than usual for the S line of phones, but otherwise the script will remain the same.

Here's the script. Samsung will be the first major Android maker out of the gate with Qualcomm's newest chips, this time with the Snapdragon 888. Samsung will use its unseemingly immense marketing budget and longstanding carrier relationships to ensure it will be seen as the default option if you want a premium Android phone - especially if you are making that purchase in a US carrier store.

…

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CES 2021 Day 2: here come the gaming laptops

2021-01-13T07:00:00-05:00

Razer Blade 15 Advanced | Razer

Yesterday, AMD and Nvidia took to the CES virtual stage to announce their respective updates. AMD headlined with a new series of CPUs, the 7nm Ryzen 5000 series, that is going to be a really compelling gaming laptop option. Nvidia headlined with new graphics for laptops, bringing some performance that was previously exclusive to desktop machines.

With all the parts from AMD, Nvidia, and Intel out, the laptops made up of those parts were free to be announced. And so we had a very, very large pile of gaming laptops to sift through from Asus, Razer, Acer, Lenovo, Gigabyte, Dell, and Origin.

They're all linked below and taken in sum I am optim …

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CES Day 1: TCL takes its shot and Intel hunkers down

2021-01-12T07:00:00-05:00

One of the things that usually happens at CES in Las Vegas is you get a sense that one company or another is really going hard. A few years ago Google started throwing unseemly amounts of money at an outdoor CES installation in a bid to show that the Google Assistant was ready to dominate the smart home. It was an acceleration of a trend in the smart home: a battle with Alexa to form an ecosystem. Standing outside the convention center in 2018, that trend loomed large both metaphorically and physically.

Now that CES is online-only, it's a little harder for companies to puff their chests out and declare that they (or their products) have hit …

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What to expect at CES 2021

2021-01-11T07:00:00-05:00

The Consumer Electronics Show officially begins this week. Thankfully, the Consumer Electronics Association capitulated in July and switched the whole thing over to being online-only. But it's hard to know what CES is even supposed to be without giant convention halls filled with ostentatious displays, blinking lights, and hordes of exhausted and smelly people in off-the-rack suits. Whatever happens, you will be able to find all our coverage right here.

The chief executive of the CEA Gary Shapiro told the Wall Street Journal that his organization did its best to try to translate some of the experience online. I can tell you that many on our …

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The MacBook Air is once again the benchmark by which other laptops will be measured

2020-11-20T07:00:00-05:00

Last week I wrote that Apple seemed "astonishingly confident" in its new M1-based Macs. This week we know why: they are astonishingly good. I reviewed the MacBook Air, Nilay Patel reviewed the entry-level 13-inch MacBook Pro, and Chris Welch reviewed the new Mac mini.

All three are equally impressive, but it's the Air in particular that stands out as offering incredible power at its price point. I'm also impressed with battery life. And the fact that Apple's Rosetta 2 translation layer doesn't cause slowdown or bugs for legacy apps.

Wins all around, then. Not very often that happens in consumer tech! The webcams are still terrible and ther …

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Samsung’s rumored Galaxy S21 phone lineup is starting to make sense

2020-11-17T07:00:00-05:00

The crush of new hardware to review and discuss is beginning to wind down, but there are a few more gadgets to talk about over the next week. Believe it or not, though, it's also time to start talking about 2021's consumer tech. No, not CES, but Samsung. The company is widely expected to hold its Galaxy S21 event in January instead of the usual March.

How come? I don't have any good guesses, but I think I'd be skeptical about COVID-related reasons. Samsung can move remarkably fast in bringing new products to market, but I bet its flagships are planned much earlier than things like the Galaxy S20 FE.

Since our perception of time has become …

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