The Verge: ▽ We've had touchscreen laptops for years. Can Apple make them better?

Dominic Preston

NEWS EDITOR

Has Apple got the magic touch?

After rolling out a refreshed iPad Mini, and spec bumps to the iMac and Mac Book Pro, today is the day: all signs suggest Apple is about to reveal the first Mac Book with a touchscreen. The question now is how it'll do it. Will this be a convertible? Will it support the Apple Pencil? Will mac OS be tweaked to feel just a little bit more like an iPad? Will this all have been worth the wait?

By

Antonio G. Di Benedetto

A fridge is about to be merged with a toaster. Dogs and cats are soon to be living together. But it’s not mass hysteria; Apple is expected to finally announce a touchscreen Mac Book today at its “Pro and Tell” event.

A laptop with a touchscreen should be no big deal — we’ve had them for ages. But Apple took a hardline stance against them. In addition to Tim Cook’s infamous 2012 quote equating it to combining kitchen appliances, Steve Jobs emphatically dismissed touchscreen laptops as “ergonomically terrible” back in 2010, saying, “Touch surfaces don’t want to be vertical.”

So how is Apple going to do it exactly? How will the company that puts the word “magic” in some of its product names bring the magic to a touchscreen Mac Book?

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Anthropic’s elaborate plan to keep Wall Street at bay

Robert Hart

Anthropic wants to have it both ways. With its impending IPO, it wants to tap the vast riches of the public markets and insists it doesn’t want to compromise its core mission of developing AI safely and for the benefit of humanity. But greater model capabilities bring greater risks, and shareholders eager for returns may have little patience for costly safety measures that slow products on their way to market.

Sam Altman, the CEO of Anthropic’s archrival, Open AI, has cited investor pressures as one reason the company is not pursuing an IPO this year. Anthropic hopes it can resist investor pressures with a mind-boggling governance structure.

Is this the future of America?

Our first look at Amazon’s big new Echo Show 16

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy

Amazon’s latest Echo Show smart display is big, gorgeous, and eye-wateringly expensive.

After spending time with the device at Amazon’s event in New York City this week, I think the Echo Show 16 could be the versatile family hub Alexa users have been asking for. The sleek hardware brings with it a completely new software experience, including better smart home controls, a much-improved calendar interface, and a real photo frame option — all fully customizable.

But at double the price of the $250 Echo Show 11 and $200 more than Apple’s new Home View smart display, it may be too expensive, even for diehard Alexa fans.

Major League Baseball is looking for a new kind of fan

Mia Sato

On October 2nd, just as Major League Baseball’s Division Series was kicking off, the main MLB Instagram and Tik Tok accounts posted a video hyping up the teams still in the running for the World Series. It featured clips of players from the Milwaukee Brewers, Los Angeles Dodgers, Chicago White Sox, and more sliding into home plate, hitting homers, and celebrating hits — standard fare for a highlight reel. What really makes the montage, though, is that it’s set to an Olivia Rodrigo song.

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