As is tradition, iFixit has torn open the latest iPhone and laid its parts bare on a table. It found some interesting details about how Apple might be hiding the crease on the Duo's folding screen and gave it a 5/10 repairability score. That might not seem particularly high, but it's the best score the site has given to a foldable yet.

The internal screen's matte nano-texture cover doesn't just make it more readable in bright sunlight; it also helps mask the crease by scattering reflections. When looking at the display under a microscope, iFixit also found oval-shaped subpixels arranged at various angles, which the site believes are design …

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Social media and the iPhone Duo subreddit are filled with reports of Apple's foldable failing quickly and in spectacular fashion. Some users report having the phone for only a few hours before the hinge seems to catch on something, then audibly crack and break the screen. Tellingly, the cracks all seem to happen in the same place.

YouTuber CuriousHagi was able to reproduce the cracked screen during some durability testing of the iPhone Duo. Then he pulled it apart to try and find the culprit. What he found is that the Duo's hinge is quite complex, consisting of a gear-like central hinge and two different types of linking hinges.

The piec …

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I know many of you are mourning the loss of the Arc browser, and I get it. It felt like the first app in a long time to really offer a new approach to browser design. Atlassian bought the company last year and shifted its focus to developing Dia, its even more AI-focused browser. And soon enough, Arc will officially be no more, leaving dedicated users in a lurch. But I abandoned Arc quite some time ago for the Zen Browser and haven't really missed it. If you're willing to deal with some minor inconveniences, I think you'll find Zen is the Arc replacement you're looking for.

Zen unabashedly rips off all the best bits of Arc. Visually, they'r …

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The Crkd Nitro Deck was a saving grace for the original Nintendo Switch. The slide-on $59.99 accessory brought Hall effect sticks to drift-plagued consoles - no need to open up your Joy-Con for a complicated repair. The Nitro Deck 2, made for both the original Switch and the larger Switch 2, continues the tradition of having better sticks than what Nintendo puts in even the newest Joy-Con (though these aren't Hall effect or TMR). But it doesn't feel as essential, and there's one thing I really can't stand about it.

It's too difficult to use the Nitro Deck 2's ABXY face buttons without the right stick getting in the way. The stick-to-button …

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Instagram is continuing its expansion into living rooms with Instagram for TV, for Apple TV. The company first started testing a version of the platform focused on Reels, live streams, and other video content, blown up for a bigger screen in December of last year. Then, in June, it launched a slew of new features for the app, which is available for Amazon's Fire TV, Samsung Smart TVs, and Google TV.

Now Meta is bringing the app to Apple TV, though there's been little fanfare. MacRumors spotted an updated Instagram app in the App Store that added Apple TV to its list of compatible platforms on October 23rd. Archived versions of the app page …

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The mods at r/opensource posted new submission rules that, among other things, banned projects that use AI. The post made Saturday evening opens by saying, "If your project uses AI, is made by AI, or is intended for AI, it's not welcome on r/opensource. AI, as it exists today, is incongruent to this Open Source community."

The new rules have set off a firestorm in the comments, and even spurred the creation of a rival sub r/trueopensource. Moderator Wolvereness has waded into the comments to explain that there's nuance and room for selective enforcement, such as "software that incidentally has accessibility features that use AI," including …

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It feels like Apple's Welcome Home event just happened. And the iPhone Duo announcement isn't all that far in our rearview mirror, either. Yet, the company is back with another launch, focused on the MacBook Pro, it looks like. Its "Pro and tell" event is scheduled for October 28th at 1PM ET in Los Angeles. While obviously nothing is confirmed yet, it sure seems like we're finally going to get that long-rumored touchscreen MacBook Pro.

Beyond that? There could be an OLED update for the iPad Mini, plus M6 updates across other devices, following the M6 debut with the Mac Mini in August.

A touchscreen MacBook Pro

A MacBook Pro with an OLED t …

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It looks like the long-rumored touchscreen MacBook might actually get announced next week, and after using the Lenovo Yoga 9n for our testing of Nvidia's RTX Spark platform, it got me thinking: this is a lot of what I want from a touchscreen MacBook.

Like the Apple silicon in modern MacBook Pros, RTX Spark is an Arm-based processor with a beefy integrated GPU and lots of unified memory. And the Yoga is the most fun RTX Spark laptop so far because it's a 16-inch 2-in-1 convertible with a stylus. Its Nvidia-powered compatriots also have touchscreens, like most Windows laptops, but they're conventional clamshell designs.

The Lenovo Yoga d …

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Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 149, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, happy It Actually Feels Like Fall Now At Least In My Neighborhood), and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)

This week, I've been reading about Demis Hassabis and computer chips and permafrost, enjoying the first episodes of Machine Gods, filming the next season of Version History (pet season!), seeing You Can See Everything and then reading and listening to absolutely everything about it, painstakingly updating all the stuff in my 1Password, making tiny documents with Tiny Little O …

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Xbox's first chief operating officer (COO) is leaving after the new role was created just a few months ago. Helen Chiang is leaving Microsoft today, according to an internal Xbox memo seen by The Verge. Chiang has been at Microsoft for 21 years, serving as the head of Minecraft before being promoted to Xbox chief operating officer in July.

Xbox CEO Asha Sharma announced Chiang's departure in a surprisingly short memo today. "Helen Chiang is leaving Microsoft today. I'm grateful for her years of service and wish her well," said Sharma. As Chiang is departing today, her immediate responsibilities are being split up between other Xbox leaders …

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Remember Popcorn Time, the app that served as an easy-to-use front end for streaming torrents of movies and TV shows? Development of the MPAA's least-favorite app of the 2010s has been abandoned for years, but the "Netflix of Piracy" software is still installed on millions of devices that are just waiting to join a bot army. Researchers at Eye Security found the updater for a Popcorn Time fork called "Time4Popcorn" still running on tons of Windows, macOS, and Android devices located around the world, phoning home to now-abandoned web domains over unencrypted HTTP and running an outdated, insecure version of Chrome.

Eye Security's Niels Teus …

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Last week, Starshield - the version of SpaceX's Starlink used by the Ukrainian military - was throttled to block terminals traveling above certain speeds from accessing the service. The Ukrainian army's interceptors, which counter Russian drones carrying bombs, suddenly stopped working at high speeds, making it easier for Russia to attack the country's energy infrastructure and leading to a reported two deaths and at least 17 injuries.

The Ukrainian military reported receiving no advance warning about the Starshield speed restriction. But Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said it was a direct message from the US amid rising tensions b …

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We gave the iPhone Duo a 7 /10. But that wasn't always the score we planned, and it might not be the right score forever. Such are the challenges of reviewing - and assessing - a big, new idea about the most popular smartphone in history.

On this episode of The Vergecast, David and Nilay debate whether the Duo deserved the score it got, and try to work through how this device might change over time. Is the outer screen, as Daring Fireball's John Gruber suggested, the worst iPhone ever? Would it be a better product if it started as an iPad rather than an iPhone? Would we feel differently about this thing if it were simply called the iPad Du …

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Google has updated its privacy policy in a way that could mean you'll start seeing targeted ads based on your personal data if you're using personalized AI features. The update, spotted by Android Authority, adds an exception to its promise about not using your Drive, Gmail, or Google Photos for personalized ads. While the previous version simply said it wouldn't do that, as of October 16th, Google has added the line, "unless you choose to make data from these services available to other Google services that support personalized ads."

That means anyone who has connected their Drive, Gmail, or Google Photos to AI Mode and other Search tools …

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The iPhone Duo officially goes on sale today, but a few units already have broken screens. According to posts on Reddit about the affected units, the issue appears to be happening at a similar spot on all of them: Some kind of problem shows up on the inner screen along the hinge and a strange bright line (or lines) across the right side of the display.

Here's how one user in Australia described what happened to their phone:

Had my iPhone Duo for about six hours and had probably opened it fewer than 20 times.

I was showing it to a friend, and as I opened it, I felt something around the internal hinge, underneath the screen.

As I cont …

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SpaceX plans to access at least 80,000 cell sites as part of efforts to compete directly with Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T, according to a report from Bloomberg. Sources tell the publication that SpaceX is in talks with Crown Castle Inc., one of the nation's largest cell tower owners.

The move would give SpaceX access to half of the 158,500 cell towers currently operational in the US, according to Reuters. When asked about a potential partnership with SpaceX, Amazon, or other satellite services during an earnings call on Wednesday, Crown Castle CEO Chris Hillabrant said, "I don't think I want to get into customer-specific detail, but you can …

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Meta is delaying the enforcement of its new business terms after publishers raised concerns that they could allow the company to scrape news sites for AI training, as reported earlier by Fast Company. In a statement to The Verge, Meta spokesperson Daniel Roberts says the terms will go into effect on November 20th "to allow more time for us to explain to our partners and stakeholders what's changing and what's not."

The business terms, which were originally supposed to go into effect on October 30th, appeared to give Meta permission to freely scrape the new sites that use its platforms, while using the material for AI training. Though Meta u …

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Seven years after Sigma claimed its original fp was the world's smallest and lightest full-frame mirrorless camera, the company has announced a similarly compact follow-up with several welcome upgrades, including an improved sensor, an articulating LCD display, and longer battery life. But this time around, Sigma is only claiming its new FP2 is the "world's smallest" full-frame shooter since those upgrades have increased its body-only weight by about 6 grams.

The Sigma FP2 will be available on November 11th and starts at $2,199 for the camera body alone. For $2,749, you can bundle it with Sigma's upgraded EVF-21 viewfinder featuring a 5.76 …

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The Duo is an entirely new kind of iPhone, so it comes with a bit of a learning curve. That's a wild thing to imagine, since the iPhone has had very few fundamental changes since its inception. But the Duo is built different. If you won the preorder lottery and managed to get your hands on one today, you'll see what that means. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll lose track of the volume buttons as you turn the thing around.

We've learned a few tricks over the past week of flipping and folding the Duo as much as we could. Here are our favorite tips and hacks for newly minted Duo owners.

You can set orientation lock on each screen independent …

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If you've been feeling nostalgic for your old iPod, you can head over to Apple Music's 404 page to listen to music on a virtual re-creation of the first-generation iPod. The hidden iPod was spotted by users on social media on Friday. It's appropriately stocked with music from the early 2000s, like Coldplay's "Viva La Vida" or Gorillaz's "Feel Good Inc." The iPod seems to pop up on any non-existent Apple Music page, so you can find it by just adding a string of random letters after the main Apple Music URL.

Read the full story at The Verge.