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Phones don’t have lights

2026-09-25T14:06:58-04:00

Mark Zuckerberg has a new defense of the Ray-Ban Meta glasses: They're actually doing more to signal they're taking a photo than phones do. He's brought this up in at least two recent interviews, noting that the glasses have a light that comes on to signal when a photo is being taken, while phones do not. In one of the interviews, Joanna Stern notes that, while phones do not always emit a light, someone does have to hold a phone up in the air, which is itself pretty noticeable.

On today's Vergecast, we're talking about Meta Connect, the Muse AI assistant, all the new smart glasses hardware, and Zuckerberg's response to the privacy uproar ar …

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The real story of the iPhone 18 Pro’s camera

2026-09-18T13:06:37-04:00

It's one of the most fascinating years in a while when it comes to iPhone camera upgrades. The big story of the iPhone 18 Pro is the variable aperture main lens, which lets you open the aperture up wider for better low light shots and make the aperture smaller for better depth of field in group photos. But all I can get anyone to talk about is the software upgrades: it turns out, they're a lot more useful day to day than the aperture on a camera this small.

This week on The Vergecast, David Imel and Allison Johnson are here for a deep dive into the iPhone 18 Pro's camera. There's a lot to explore here, from the aperture, to the camera app's …

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What if social media isn’t hurting kids?

2026-09-15T16:13:30-04:00

Two years ago, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt released his New York Times bestseller The Anxious Generation. The book posits that the rise of social media and smartphone use is largely to blame for the prominent decline in teen mental health since 2010. It quickly became a central rallying cry of the social media backlash. Haidt has been credited with helping inspire Australia's nationwide teen social media ban. He has joined forces with bereaved parents who are fighting tech companies in court. His name comes up unprompted in conversations with people in power who say his book opened their eyes to an online crisis.

Haidt's theory has …

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We unfolded the iPhone Duo

2026-09-11T16:29:34-04:00

You only get one chance at a first impression, and getting to introduce Apple's first folding phone is certainly a strong way to start things off as Apple's CEO. On The Vergecast today, we're talking all about Apple's launch event: how John Ternus did in his first appearance as CEO, what we make of the new iPhones, and whether Apple is stepping into dangerous territory with its new AI features on the Apple Watch.

First up, Allison Johnson joins me to discuss the new iPhones, which she had a chance to test in Cupertino. Both of us have some questions about the new variable aperture camera on the iPhone 18 Pro - and whether the real upgrade s …

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Schools are catching on to Big Tech’s playbook

2026-09-10T15:49:38-04:00

It's the hot new thing in tech, and it's where all the jobs are. Students who don't learn to use it fall behind. And to help them catch up in time, its creators are graciously providing the resources and curriculum for learning it, often pro bono.

That's the narrative AI companies are pitching schools on right now, but according to New York Times education technology reporter Natasha Singer, it's also how the tech industry has built its influence in classrooms for the past 15 years.

In a new book, Coding Kids, Singer details how tech companies took a central role in promoting computers and coding skills in education, promising computer sci …

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AGI is whatever you want it to be

2026-09-04T13:16:49-04:00

OpenAI announced its next big model, GPT-6 Astra, and also, by the way, that "the AGI era" is here now.

Today on The Vergecast, we've got an all-star panel to break down the news of the week.

First, senior AI reporter Hayden Field joins us to talk about our supposed AGI era and Nvidia's acquisition of Hugging Face.

Then, our friend Joanna Stern pops in to talk about new Apple CEO John Ternus, old Apple CEO Tim Cook, and most importantly, to speculate on the format of next week's Apple keynote.

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We wrap things up with a super-special lightning round from the IFA electronics show in Berlin. Senior reviewer J …

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The iPhone Fold could make concerts even worse

2026-08-28T13:03:26-04:00

You know the person blocking your view of the concert because their phone is swaying in the air, recording the entire thing? Get ready for the unfolded version of it.

This week on The Vergecast, we dive right into the big week of Apple news. First, it's the refreshed Mac Mini and Mac Studio, as well as the new M6 and M5 Ultra chips. Apple is advertising them all as achievements in AI inference, but we're skeptical this is more than a marketing ploy for now. Then we get into the newly announced Apple event, why we're not expecting to see an iPhone 18, and whether the folding phone form factor is really good enough yet for Apple.

After that, …

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Pixel 11 gets in on the digicam trend

2026-08-21T14:24:41-04:00

I recently looked back at a photo I'd taken on a smartphone in 2014, and I was struck by just how good it looked. The details were soft, the shadows were dark. It was the kind of photo I felt like I hadn't seen out of a phone in years. That might be changing, though. The Pixel 11 includes a suite of new photography features called Camera Looks that allow those who really care about those things (hi, it's all of us) to dial in their preferences and get rid of that modern over-processed look.

On today's episode of The Vergecast, David Imel joins us to discuss his time reviewing the Pixel 11 Pro and how he's thinking about its new approach to …

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Mark Zuckerberg has an Instagzam

2026-08-14T12:54:16-04:00

Instagram's wordmark is iconic. Well, was iconic. Apparently Instagram thought it looked old, so the company rolled out a new one this week. It doesn't look like the old Instagram wordmark. It doesn't even look like it spells Instagram anymore. And we cannot figure out why Instagram decided to do this.

On this episode of The Vergecast, David and Nilay start by discussing the new logo, the executive urge to redesign everything all the time, and whether new is always better. After that, they get into the other big Meta release of the week: Mark Zuckerberg's many-thousand-word missive on the future of AI. There are a lot of ideas and proposals …

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What’s behind the Google AI shake-up

2026-08-07T13:06:00-04:00

Some of the biggest names on Google's AI team got new jobs this week. In some cases, including for legendary Googler Jeff Dean, those jobs are no longer at Google. Given that Google's models seem to be behind the best of what's coming out of anthropic and OpenAI, is this a sign of Google in turmoil? Is it about Demis Hassabis wanting something more interesting to work on than virtual assistants? Or is there something else entirely happening here?

On this episode of The Vergecast, Nilay and David start by discussing the leadership shake-up at Google, the state of the AI race, and whether Google is actually set up to succeed here. They also t …

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