So much of our online and technological lives rely on standards, the sets of rules designed to make sure our favorite gadgets and services work together. At their best, they make everything work seamlessly, and we never need to worry about what’s happening behind the scenes. But at their worst, they leave us perplexed about why our new stuff just won’t work — and wondering how we could make it better.
Spec-tacular week
A week of stories all about the pros and cons of the tech standards that control our lives.
Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images
In this special issue from The Verge, we explore the way specs and protocols affect our productivity and passions — from the promise of a more efficient streaming video codec, to the power of the watt as a way to understand our gadgets, to our perpetual frustration with Micro USB. These are the ways specs and standards run our digital lives.
The company is as popular as it has ever been — and it owes it to leaving the technological arms race behind.
Andrew Webster
The era of playing a game off a disc might basically be over.
Jay Peters
Understand how to paint by number without your brain exploding.
Jess Weatherbed
Understanding watt-hours will help you survive power outages and off-grid adventures.
Thomas Ricker
Forget mAh, and stop sweating megahertz. The watt reigns supreme, if only companies would share it with us.
Sean Hollister
Here’s why your Nintendo Wii still connects to your router.
Wes Davis
After improving hard drives, tunneling magnetoresistance technology could put an end to joystick drift.
Andrew Liszewski
Now an open-source protocol and with a new long-range technology, the path forward for Z-Wave looks clearer, with a little help from Matter.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
A universal open-source format exists, but only a handful of cameras use it.
Antonio G. Di Benedetto
Tech’s biggest players are all in on AV1, but competing codecs and technical limitations might be holding it back.
Emma Roth
It’s 2025, and I had to buy a Micro USB to USB-C cable.
Victoria Song
The company is as popular as it has ever been — and it owes it to leaving the technological arms race behind.
Andrew Webster
The era of playing a game off a disc might basically be over.
Jay Peters
Understand how to paint by number without your brain exploding.
Jess Weatherbed
Understanding watt-hours will help you survive power outages and off-grid adventures.
Thomas Ricker
Forget mAh, and stop sweating megahertz. The watt reigns supreme, if only companies would share it with us.
Sean Hollister
Here’s why your Nintendo Wii still connects to your router.
Wes Davis
After improving hard drives, tunneling magnetoresistance technology could put an end to joystick drift.
Andrew Liszewski
Now an open-source protocol and with a new long-range technology, the path forward for Z-Wave looks clearer, with a little help from Matter.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
A universal open-source format exists, but only a handful of cameras use it.
Antonio G. Di Benedetto
Tech’s biggest players are all in on AV1, but competing codecs and technical limitations might be holding it back.
Emma Roth
It’s 2025, and I had to buy a Micro USB to USB-C cable.
Victoria Song