AI researchers have recently been asking themselves a version of the question, "Is that really Zuck?"
As first reported by Bloomberg, the Meta CEO has been personally asking top AI talent to join his new "superintelligence" AI lab and reboot Llama. His recruiting process typically goes like this: a cold outreach via email or WhatsApp that cites the recruit's work history and requests a 15-minute chat. Dozens of researchers have gotten these kinds of messages at Google alone.
For those who do agree to hear his pitch (amazingly, not all of them do), Zuckerberg highlights the latitude they'll have to make risky bets, the scale of Meta's products, and the money he's prepared to invest in the infrastructure to support them. He makes clear that this new team will be empowered and sit with him at Meta's headquarters, where I'm told the desks have already been rearranged for the incoming team.
Most of the headlines so far have focused on the eye-popping compensation packages Zuckerberg is offering, some of which are well into the eight-figure range. As I've covered before, hiring the best AI researcher is like hiring a star basketball player: there are very few of them, and you have t …
You can get a great budget device these days if you know how to pick your priorities. | Image: The Verge
Some of us take a kind of “I eat to live” rather than an “I live to eat” approach to gadgets. They’re tools that help you get things done, not something you want to invest a lot of time or money in. If that’s you — and there’s no judgment here from a certifiable gadget nerd — then you can probably think of more worthwhile ways to spend $1,000 than on a phone.
Budget phones to the rescue. These devices are roughly $500 or under, though not all of them, and they’re more capable than ever. You won’t get all the bells and whistles, but you will save a little money to spend on, I don’t know, actual bells and whistles. It’s your world.
How we test
There’s no shortcut to properly testing a phone; I put my personal SIM card (physical or otherwise) in each phone I review and live with it for a minimum of one full week. I set up each phone from scratch, load it up with my apps, and go about living my life — stress testing the battery, using GPS navigation on my bike while streaming radio, taking rapid-fire portrait mode photos of my kid — everything I can throw at it. Starting over with a new phone every week either sounds like a dream or your personal hell, depending on how Into Phones you are. For me, switching has become so routine that it’s mostly painless.
Strong software support
At least a couple of years of OS upgrades and, ideally, three years of security updates. There’s no point in buying even a cheap phone if you have to replace it after just a couple of years because it stopped getting security patches.
A good screen
Since you look at it roughly two thousand times a day, your phone’s screen is one place you shouldn’t compromise. An OLED has richer contrast and color than an LCD, and the big screens on today’s phones really need at least a 1080p resolution. Faster refresh rates like 90Hz and even 120Hz are becoming more common on budget phone screens, but for my money, a smooth-scrolling LCD doesn’t look as nice as an OLED with a standard refresh rate.
Serviceable storage space
If you plan to hang onto your phone for a while, you’ll want enough storage space to accommodate all the system files, photos, and videos you’ll accumulate over the years. Ideally you’ll get at least 128GB built in.
One good rear camera, not four mediocre ones
Upgrades like telephoto cameras and optical image stabilization are rare in the under-$500 class, but you can still expect good, basic performance in good lighting from any modern smartphone. Low light is trickier. Phones in this class should offer a night mode to help with non-moving subjects in very dim light. And there are no bonus points awarded for adding extra macro and depth cameras to pad out the rear camera array — those 2- and 5-megapixel sensors are pretty much useless.
What compromises can you expect from a budget phone? Some combination of the following: slower processors, less storage, and worse cameras than flagship phones, almost across the board. Many have lower-resolution screens and water resistance is often less robust than on a pricier phone.
If I was making this recommendation to you face-to-face, you’d hear a heavy sigh. Yes, this is the cheapest new iPhone Apple makes. Yes, it comes with most of the things that make an iPhone an iPhone. But it comes with some significant tradeoffs — some of which make more sense than others — and it’s not exactly cheap. If you’re amenable to last year’s model or a refurbished iPhone 14, one of those might actually be a better option. But for an unfussy person who just wants a new iPhone for the least amount of money, the 16E will do the trick.
There’s a single 48-megapixel rear camera on the back, meaning there’s no ultrawide like on the regular 16. That’s an understandable tradeoff — so is the use of the older “notch” design rather than the Dynamic Island. But it’s harder to understand why Apple left out MagSafe here — that’s the ring of magnets built into the back of virtually every other iPhone since 2020. The 16E still supports wireless charging, but it can’t take advantage of the ecosystem of magnetic chargers and accessories on its own; you’ll need to add a magnetic case. This is a silly omission, and Apple should feel bad about it.
Another heavy sigh: the 16E supports Apple Intelligence, which you won’t get if you opt for an iPhone 15 or 14. Should you care? It’s really hard to say. What exists of Apple Intelligence so far is underwhelming and the most interesting bits won’t arrive anytime soon. If you want to future-proof your purchase as much as possible, the 16E will be ready for Apple’s AI. But don’t buy one expecting a life-changing experience now. It’s just an iPhone after all, for better and worse, and right now it’s the best price you’ll find on a brand-new one.
Google’s Pixel A-series phones have been my go-to recommendation for a cheap Android phone for years, but there was still room for improvement. With the 9A, Google made some modest tweaks that make it even easier to recommend — and at $499, the price is right.
The phone uses a Tensor G4 chipset that doesn’t run as hot as some of its predecessors, and performance is reliable. The 6.3-inch OLED screen is a little bigger and a bit brighter than last year’s, which makes a difference when you use the phone outside. Durability also got a small boost up to IP68, which means it can survive a drop in deeper water than the IP67-rated Pixel 8A.
The 9A’s camera is fine, though it comes up short against the rest of the Pixel 9 series in low light. Portrait mode could be better, too, and if you care a lot about image quality, then that might be a good reason to consider stepping up to a Pixel 9. But it does the trick for everyday snaps, and for the price, the 9A’s better qualities outweigh its shortcomings by a wide margin.
The OnePlus 13R isn’t quite as well-rounded as my pick for the best overall budget Android phone, the Pixel 9A. It’s also a little pricier at $599 — though we’ve seen it at $499 for extended periods of time — but for some people the 13R’s upgrades will make it a better choice. It comes with one of the best big screens in its class, and lots of people love a big screen. The 13R also offers very strong battery performance; unless you’re a power user, you can probably manage two full days on a single charge.
There’s also very fast charging with the included charger, though you won’t find wireless charging at any speed. The 13R also lacks full water resistance; it should hold up fine against spray and rain showers, but it isn’t rated to withstand full immersion. Plenty of people won’t find those omissions bothersome, but they make it harder to recommend to a general audience — especially at a higher price than the Pixel 9A.
The Samsung Galaxy A35 5G comes with surprisingly strong specs for its $399 price. They’re the kind of features you won’t really spot from the outside, but they’re important, particularly its IP67 rating for dust and water resistance. Unlike virtually every other phone at this price, the A35 5G is built to withstand water immersion, so you don’t need to sweat it if your phone lands in a toilet bowl or puddle.
Here’s another unexciting spec: four years of OS updates and five years of security updates. That’s not the very best in the budget category — the Pixel 9A takes that honor with seven years of updates — but it’s much better than the two or three years we typically see in phones well under $500.
The camera is lackluster; it’s fine in bright light but struggles in dim and mixed indoor lighting. It doesn’t have the strongest processing performance you can find under $500, either, and the Samsung-made Exynos processor occasionally stutters when quickly bouncing between tasks. I was horrified — horrified! — when I accidentally texted my husband one of the automatically generated replies because it popped up at the last moment as I was trying to tap on something else. These things don’t happen when everything loads quickly.
But overall, it’s a compelling package — especially with a big, crowd-pleasing OLED display and strong battery performance. If you’re a light user and not fussy about camera quality, the A35 5G offers some upgrades that make a real difference in the long term.
Other budget phones we tested
The 2024 Motorola Moto G Power has all the makings of a good budget phone, including a lovely vegan leather exterior and wireless charging. But it’s loaded with bloatware of the worst kind, and that alone disqualifies it from our recommendations. Read our impressions.
The Samsung Galaxy S24 FE is another perfectly capable phone that doesn’t quite earn a recommendation here. It’s a little outside the scope of this guide at $649 anyway, but you do get a telephoto lens and a nice, big screen for that price. Still, you’re better off saving a bunch and picking up the Pixel 8A or trying to score a trade-in promo for the newer Galaxy S25. Read our review.
Update, June 13th: Updated prices and availability. Samsung’s Galaxy A35 5G is currently out of stock at Amazon and Samsung, while Best Buy has it marked down on clearance.
Whether you’re buying your first pair of AirPods or replacing a well-used older pair, it’s easy to understand why so many iPhone owners prefer Apple’s earbuds and headphones over other options. Apple has spent years gradually adding new features that work best — and sometimes only work at all — within the company’s walled garden. These convenient tricks include audio sharing, automatic switching between Apple’s various devices, Apple TV integration, and more.
There are four AirPods models to choose from, each with a distinct appeal and upside. You likely already know whether you’re more interested in earbuds or over-ear headphones, so that’s the first divide. In the case of headphones, your only choice is the AirPods Max. But in the earbuds category, Apple has three options: the AirPods Pro, AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation, and the plain old AirPods 4.
If you want the earbuds that guarantee you’ll get the latest and greatest software features from Apple, the second-generation AirPods Pro should be at the top of your list. They offer the whole gamut of ecosystem exclusives. And if you’re the type of person to misplace things, you’ll be thankful that the earbuds’ case has a U1 chip for pinpoint location finding. So whenever they go missing, you can track right where they are in the room using Apple’s Find My app.
The AirPods Pro deliver noise cancellation that’s effective at tamping down the volume of your surroundings in all but the most hectic environments. Their sound quality is on another level compared to the regular AirPods — helped in no small part by the in-ear seal you get from their silicone ear tips.
In 2024, Apple introduced three major hearing health features, including a hearing test, automatic hearing protection, and the option to use the AirPods Pro as clinical-grade hearing aids if you have mild or moderate hearing loss. No other AirPods (including the AirPods Max) offer this functionality, so it definitely sets the Pros apart. And the same can be said of their volume controls; you just swipe on the stems to raise or lower the loudness of your music, which is a handy advantage that the similar-looking AirPods 4 lack.
But not everyone likes the way ear tips feel. Even with venting and the other measures Apple has taken to improve comfort and reduce that clogged-up sensation, some people just prefer the regular, one-size-fits-most AirPods. Their open design means you’re never cut off from the outside world. The AirPods Pro have an impressive transparency mode, but the AirPods 4 don’t need to pipe in your surroundings; you can always hear what’s happening around you.
Apple sells two versions of the AirPods 4. No matter which you choose, you’ll get the same sound quality, microphone performance on voice calls, and IP54 water resistance. (The latter also applies to the AirPods Pro.) The more expensive pair features active noise cancellation and a more advanced charging case. You might be surprised by how well the noise cancellation works even with an unsealed design; it reduces office ambience and annoying hums, but louder sounds and voices still cut through the ANC. As for the case, the pricier AirPods 4 include wireless charging and Find My integration.
If you’re really interested in noise-canceling earbuds, you should consider saving a bit more and stepping up to the AirPods Pro 2. They offer much better audio quality, stronger ANC, and a better experience. I’d only steer you to the noise-canceling AirPods 4 if you’re really opposed to ear tips.
I’ve gone back and forth recommending Apple’s $549 AirPods Max over the last few years. They have a standout design, but the good looks and premium feel come at the cost of weight. These headphones are considerably heavier than most competitors and can get fatiguing over extended use. But Apple has also made smart choices: the fabric ear cups on the AirPods Max are much more pleasant in warm weather than the pleather you’ll find on Bose and Sony products, and won’t get your ears sweaty.
The AirPods Max provide impressive noise cancellation, and the transparency mode is clearer and more natural-sounding than any other set of headphones on the market. As for sound, Apple’s headphones have a pleasant sound signature that works well across a wide range of genres. They’re easy to listen to with an impressive soundstage for closed-back headphones.
You lose some features — like conversation awareness and adaptive audio — that are included on the AirPods Pro; this is a side effect of the AirPods Max using Apple’s older H1 chip. But the company recently added lossless audio over USB-C, meaning these headphones offer the richest audio fidelity of the whole lineup.
We spend dozens of hours using AirPods products for our initial reviews, and that testing extends for weeks and months afterward. That’s where we assess sound quality, mic performance, and overall reliability. Where applicable, we try the active noise cancellation in a wide range of different environments and have put the hearing protection of the AirPods Pro through the paces at concerts. We also closely examine ecosystem benefits and how the AirPods and Apple’s other products work together.
Update, June 13th: Adjusted prices and availability.
Welcome back to Week in Review! We have lots for you this week, including what came out of WWDC 2025; The Browser Company's AI browser; OpenAI's partnership with Mattel; and your iPad might finally be a true work machine.
Apple this week provided a glimpse into a feature that solves one of the biggest drawbacks of passkeys, the industry-wide standard for website and app authentication that isn't susceptible to credential phishing and other attacks targeting passwords.
The import/export feature, which Apple demonstrated at this week’s Worldwide Developers Conference, will be available in the next major releases of iOS, macOS, iPadOS, and visionOS. It aims to solve one of the biggest shortcomings of passkeys as they have existed to date. Passkeys created on one operating system or credential manager are largely bound to those environments. A passkey created on a Mac, for instance, can sync easily enough with other Apple devices connected to the same iCloud account. Transferring them to a Windows device or even a dedicated credential manager installed on the same Apple device has been impossible.
Growing pains
That limitation has led to criticisms that passkeys are a power play by large companies to lock users into specific product ecosystems. Users have also rightly worried that the lack of transferability increases the risk of getting locked out of important accounts if a device storing passkeys is lost, stolen, or destroyed.
Steve Jobs spoke at the 114th commencement at Stanford University in Stanford, California, on June 12, 2005.
Photo by MediaNews Group/The Mercury News via Getty Image
Steve Jobs' notes and emails were published for the 20th anniversary of his Stanford commencement speech.
The speech emphasized themes of intuition, morality, and personal growth.
Here's what his newly released drafts and notes from other speeches said.
A trove of newly released emails from Steve Jobs shows how the late Apple cofounder prepared for one of his most memorable speeches.
Jobs addressed Stanford University graduates at the university's commencement ceremony on June 12, 2005. Twenty years later, the Steve Jobs Archive published notes and emails he wrote to himself while drafting the speech, along with a high-definition recording of the commencement address.
His Stanford address became famous for its inspirational life lessons, which could apply to college graduates, entrepreneurs, or dropouts like himself. Jobs used his own stories to drive home his points. A recording of the speech published on YouTube in 2008 has 46 million views.
The published correspondence showed Jobs had been working on the speech for at least six months before delivering it.
His early ideas included points about diet, meditation, and encouraging students to focus on their "inner world." Jobs was introduced to Zen Buddhism and meditation in the 1970s.
Jobs wrote down several anecdotes in emails to himself before settling on his final choices for the speech.
In a May 1 draft, Jobs wrote, "Try to always surround yourself with people smarter than you." They can come from different walks of life. He pointed to a "terribly old" engineer he'd hired at Apple not long after it started, who was a "genius." (The engineer was in his 40s at the time, while Jobs was 50 when he delivered the speech.)
Jobs ultimately chose three other personal stories. The first was about "connecting the dots," the second covered "love and loss," and the third was about death.
From the oldest email published, however, Jobs had his opener locked in.
"This is the closest I've ever come to graduating from college," he wrote.
Jobs drew on an earlier commencement address and mused on parenting in his notes
The Stanford speech echoed Jobs' commencement address almost 10 years earlier.
In 1996, Jobs spoke to the graduating class of Palo Alto High School. Both speeches discussed intuition, morality, and following one's passions.
While the 1996 speech focused on the students, Jobs also thought about the parents in the crowd. Scribbled at the bottom of a printout of the speech, he jotted down some thoughts on parenting.
"They tell you that you will love your kids," the handwritten notes read, "never mention that you will fall in love with them."
He also wrote that "every injury or setback parents feel 10x" and that they will always see their children as they were at ages 5, 6, or 7.
The speech concluded by encouraging the high school students to live their lives with as few regrets as possible.
In the Stanford address, Jobs also implored the students to find what they love and live each day like it was their last, telling the story of his first bout of cancer. The Apple cofounder died of pancreatic cancer in 2011 at the age of 56. Once he devised an ending for the Stanford commencement, it stuck.
"'Stay hungry. Stay foolish.' And I have always wished that for myself," he said.
Jobs stuck to the script — that he made a point to write himself down to his "thank you very much."
WWDC was a bit of a bust. Apple's Liquid Glass design overhaul was criticized on social media because it makes some iPhone notifications hard to read. A few jokers on X even shared a screenshot of YouTube's play button obstructing the "Gl" in a thumbnail for an Apple Liquid Glass promo. Need I say more?
The more serious question hanging over this year's WWDC was not answered. When will Siri get the AI upgrade it desperately needs? Software chief Craig Federighi delivered the bad news: It's still not ready. That knocked roughly $75 billion off Apple's market value. The stock recovered a bit, but it's still badly lagging behind rivals this month.
Andy Kiersz/BI; Google Finance
Google, OpenAI, and other tech companies are launching powerful new AI models and products at a breakneck pace. Apple is running out of time to prove it's a real player in this important field. Analyst Dan Ives is usually bullish, but even he's concerned. "They have a tight window to figure this out," Ives wrote, after calling this year's WWDC a "yawner."
AI is complex, expensive, and takes a long time to get right. Apple was late to start building the needed foundational technology, such as data centers, training data pipelines, and homegrown AI chips. By contrast, Google began laying its AI groundwork decades ago. It bought DeepMind in 2014, and this AI lab shapes Google's models in profound ways today.
When I was at Google I/O last month, one or two insiders whispered a phrase. They cautiously described an "intelligence gap" that could open up between the iPhone and other smartphones. Many Android phones already feature Google's Gemini chatbot, which is far more capable than Siri. If Apple's AI upgrade takes too long, this intelligence gap could widen so much that some iPhone users might consider switching.
At I/O, these insiders only whispered this idea. That's because it will take something pretty dramatic to get people to give up their iPhones. This device has become a utility that we can't live without — even for the few days (weeks?) it might take to get used to an Android replacement.
Still, if Apple doesn't get its AI house in order soon, this intelligence gap will keep growing, and things could get really siri-ous.
In March, Apple delayed its upgraded Siri, saying that “it’s going to take us longer than we thought to deliver” the promised features. At WWDC this week, Apple’s SVP of software Craig Federighi and SVP of worldwide marketing Greg Joswiak shared more details about the decision to delay in an interview with The Wall Street Journal’s Joanna Stern.
As part of its initial Apple Intelligence announcements at WWDC 2024, Apple said that the improved Siri would have awareness of your personal context and the ability to take actions for you in apps. While Apple was showing real software at that show, Siri “didn’t converge in the way, quality-wise, that we needed it to,” Federighi said. Apple wanted it to be “really, really reliable. And we weren’t able to achieve the reliability in the time we thought.”
“Look, we don’t want to disappoint customers,” Joswiak said. “We never do. But it would’ve been more disappointing to ship something that didn’t hit our quality standard, that had an error rate that we felt was unacceptable. So we made what we thought was the best decision. I’d make it again.”
Stern asked why Apple, with all of its resources, couldn’t make it work. “When it comes to automating capabilities on devices in a reliable way, no one’s doing it really well right now,” Federighi said. “We wanted to be the first. We wanted to do it best.” While the company had “very promising early results and working initial versions,” the team came to feel that “this just doesn’t work reliably enough to be an Apple product,” he said.
At WWDC, Federighi also spoke to YouTuber iJustine, and both Federighi and Joswiak were interviewed by Tom’s Guide’s Mark Spoonauer and TechRadar’s Lance Ulanoff. In Apple’s March statement, it said that anticipated rolling out the Siri upgrades “in the coming year,” which, to Spoonauer, Joswiak clarified to mean 2026.
Spotlight and themes are in the limelight. | Screenshot: Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge
At WWDC, Apple announced its new Liquid Glass design language, which is coming to all of its devices, including Macs. I've been tinkering with the macOS Tahoe 26 developer beta on the M4 MacBook Air for about a day. So far, the aesthetic changes range from slick to slightly overwrought, but the new Spotlight search features are nifty and useful.
There are new touches of glassy transparency all over macOS 26, including the Dock, Finder, widgets, and built-in apps. It's more subtle than on the iPhone, mostly because the Mac's much larger screen real estate makes the Liquid Glass elements more like accents than whatever this mess is supposed to be. I'm not very fond of it just yet, but maybe it will grow on me, like UI changes tend to.
The Dock now has a frosted background that's more translucent than Sequoia's flatter design. The hazy, frozen glass aesthetic also extends to widgets, like the calendar and weather, and drop-down menus - though the latter have much higher opacity. The pop-ups for volume and brightness now use this distorted glass look as well, though they've moved to the top-right corner of the screen instead of being centered above the dock. Frankly, they're ugly, …
Apple's WWDC 2025 had new software, Formula 1 references, and a piano man crooning the text of different app reviews. But one key feature got the short end of the stick: Siri.
Although the company continuously referenced Apple Intelligence and pushed new features like live translation for Messages, FaceTime, and phone calls, Apple's AI assistant was barely mentioned. In fact, the most attention Siri got was when Apple explained that some of its previously promised features were running behind schedule.
To address what many saw as the elephant in the room, Apple's keynote briefly mentioned that it had updated Siri to be "more natural and more helpful," but that personalization features were still on the horizon. Those features were first mentioned at last year's WWDC, with a rollout timeline "over the course of the next year."
"We're continuing our work to deliver the features that make Siri even more personal," Craig Federighi, Apple's SVP of software engineering, said during Monday's keynote. "This work needed more time to reach our high quality bar, and we look forward to sharing more about it in the coming year."
Apple Intelligence was designed to leverage things that generative AI already does well, like text and image generation, to improve upon existing features.
Some users and designers are already panning Apple's new user interface dubbed Liquid Glass, even though it's a bit early. There are reasons to think it might improve — but also valid critiques.
Apple has announced updates to the AI models that power its suite of Apple Intelligence features across iOS, macOS, and more. But according to the company's own benchmarks, the models underperform older models from rival tech firms including OpenAI.
On Thursday, pioneering computer engineer and Apple veteran William "Bill" Atkinson died of pancreatic cancer at his home in Portola Valley, California, surrounded by family. He was 74. "We regret to write that our beloved husband, father, and stepfather Bill Atkinson passed away," his family wrote on Facebook. "He was a remarkable person, and the world will be forever different because he lived in it."
As Apple employee No. 51, Atkinson transformed abstract computer science into intuitive visual experiences that millions would use daily: His QuickDraw graphics engine made the Macintosh interface possible; he introduced the wider world to bitmap editing with MacPaint; and HyperCard presaged hyperlinked elements of the World Wide Web by years.
A screenshot of Bill Atkinson's MacPaint, released with the Macintosh in January 1984.
Credit:
Benj Edwards / Apple
"I say this with no hyperbole: Bill Atkinson may well have been the best computer programmer who ever lived," wrote veteran Apple analyst John Gruber on Daring Fireball in a tribute. "Without question, he's on the short list. What a man, what a mind, what gifts to the world he left us."
Imagine that you have a song file—drums, guitar, bass, vocals, piano—and you want to rebalance it, bringing the voice down just a touch in the mix.
Or you want to turn a Lyle Lovett country-rock jam into a slamming club banger, and all that's standing between you and the booty-shaking masses is a clean copy of Lovett's voice without all those instruments mucking things up.
Or you recorded a once-in-a-lifetime, Stevie Nicks-meets-Ann Wilson vocal performance into your voice notes app... but your dog was baying in the background, and your guitar was out of tune. Can you extract the magic and discard the rest?
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A screenshot of Bill Atkinson's MacPaint, released with the Macintosh in January 1984.
Credit:
Benj Edwards / Apple
