verge-rss

Image: Richard Parry for The Verge

Back in 2005, a small firm offered a tantalizing vision of the future of computer keyboards.
What if your keyboard was filled with tiny screens that showed you exactly what any given press would do, each built into a crystal-clear key? The keys would morph and shift as you needed, transforming from letters and numbers to full-color icons and app shortcuts, depending on what you were doing.
Readers and tech bloggers adored the idea. “It’s about time someone shook up this stagnant keyboard market,” declared Engadget. “The concept is fantastic,” wrote Gizmodo. Slashdot lit up.
The keyboard was just a concept, dreamed up by Art Lebedev, a Russian design firm, and it was an ambitious idea at that: called the Optimus Maximus, it would require over 100 built-in screens using display technology that wasn’t readily available at the time. With all the excitement, the firm decided to make it real.

The journey to create the Optimus Maximus would take years and end in multiple commercial failures. But Art Lebedev’s vision and the technology created along the way would live on and ultimately find widespread success — a success that’s been hidden inside another popular product: Elgato’s Stream Deck, a small desktop accessory covered in morphing, full-color keys.
By the time Elgato came to release its first Stream Deck in 2017, Art Lebedev’s Optimus keyboards had faded into history. But there’s more linking the two devices than a core idea. In fact, the Stream Deck hardware came from precisely the same company that developed the Optimus Maximus’ keys. In a very real sense, Art Lebedev’s work laid the foundations for what Elgato would go on to create.

In 2010, Elgato was in “crisis mode.”
For around a decade, the German video capture company had been selling its TV tuners to people who wanted to watch and record live television via a connected computer. But by 2010, it was clear that the market for such devices was disappearing fast. On one side, broadcast TV was becoming increasingly encrypted, limiting what Elgato’s devices could do. On the other, the streaming revolution, led by Netflix and YouTube, was cutting out the humble TV tuner entirely.
“You’re on a sinking ship, you’ve got to figure out what you’re going to do,” recalls Elgato’s Julian Fest, whose parents originally founded the company in 1999.
Elgato started to take a hard look at its business, and it noticed one number that didn’t quite make sense.
Elgato knew how many TV tuners it had sold, but people had been registering far more copies of the company’s EyeTV recording software than its own customers would need. When it emailed those customers, it found out they were using a rival piece of hardware, the Hauppauge HD-PVR — and not to record broadcast TV. They were recording gameplay from their PlayStations to put up on YouTube. Right under Elgato’s nose was a new market opportunity.

Armed with over a decade’s worth of video encoding knowledge from its TV tuner days, a direct connection to Hauppauge’s customers, and Hauppauge’s own quarterly earnings reports to know just how many HD-PVRs it sold, Elgato decided to release a rival capture product specifically tailored to gamers. The result was the Game Capture HD, released in 2012.
Three years later, when Fest took over as Elgato’s general manager, it seemed clear that the market for online gameplay videos was poised to explode. With Amazon acquiring the live streaming service Twitch for almost $1 billion in 2014, Fest was on the lookout for ways Elgato could double down. Perhaps it could offer a way to not just capture gameplay footage but also to help Twitch streamers control their broadcasts in the moment.
“If you looked at the state of Twitch and live streaming at the end of 2015, it was intriguing, but it was also kind of boring,” Fest tells The Verge. “Everybody’s stream was like, ‘Here’s my gameplay, here’s my webcam,’ and that’s it.” He figured that simplicity was because of all the different jobs a streamer has to handle during broadcasts: between playing the game, reading the chat, and entertaining an audience, it’d be difficult to also run a dynamic broadcast filled with changing layouts and eye-catching transitions.
Unless, Fest thought, there was a way to offer advanced broadcast controls without distracting a streamer from other tasks. The company found its answer in a popular German TV show where the host had a so-called “nipple board” of buttons in front of him, built into a giant desk. “Every time you pressed one of these buttons, it would play a funny clip that his team had found on TV,” Fest recalls. The team wondered if Elgato could use a similar array of buttons to control a livestream.
Elgato had its idea — now, it needed to find the right buttons to make it a reality.

Art Lebedev had never intended to make a massive splash in the keyboard business. Timur Burbaev, who served as the keyboard’s industrial designer, tells The Verge that the initial idea came about shortly after he joined in 2003. The keyboard was just meant to be a concept, similar to its Lavatrix washing machine, to show off the studio’s design chops and drum up more business in the free time between projects.
In July 2005, the company released a series of concept images of what it called the “Optimus keyboard.” It had the same basic layout as a full-size computer keyboard but with a twist: “Every key of the Optimus keyboard is a stand-alone display showing exactly what it is controlling at this very moment,” the website still reads.

One image shows how the keys could change to show an array of Photoshop tools; another shows dedicated controls for Quake. (This was 2005, after all.) On the left edge of the keyboard are macro keys that can be programmed to open specific programs, illustrated with a series of delightfully 2005-era logos like Internet Explorer and QuickTime. Although the images are renders rather than real photographs, the close-ups make an effort to show individual pixels present on the screens of the keys, a small imperfection that provides a tantalizing hint of reality. Nearly two decades later, the imaginary device still looks fantastic.
It was hard to ignore the amount of interest the design was getting. The team called an emergency meeting to discuss. “Back then, we just realized that if you get such a positive response, then let’s risk it and just produce it,” Burbaev says. It was “a clear indication” that the team should try and make it for real. The long and difficult journey of producing what would become the Optimus Maximus had begun. “No one imagined how much time and energy and especially investment it would take,” Burbaev says.
A big early decision was working out what kind of screen technology to use. The first iPod with a color display had only just been released, and the iPhone had yet to make its debut. Candybar-style phones like the Nokia 1110 and Motorola C139 reigned supreme. Art Lebedev thought LCD screens of the era were too dim and offered terrible black levels, while E Ink screens had terrible response times and no backlighting at all. OLED seemed like the best choice.
But this was long before OLED displays were routinely shipping in mainstream smartwatches, smartphones, and TVs. “The problem with OLED displays was that you could potentially find such a small OLED display in 2006 but a) it would cost you a fortune and b) it would have a massive resolution,” Burbaev says. They were meant for military users to show tactical information like maps on tiny screens, not Quake icons on a keyboard.

Art Lebedev decided its “only option” was to dive headfirst into the OLED display business. Burbaev believes his was one of the first companies to ship a product with these kinds of small, low-cost, low-resolution OLED screens. Doing so involved placing what Burbaev describes as a “very strange” order with a Taiwanese manufacturer with some prior experience. He adds that two managers from Art Lebedev ended up living in Taiwan for half a year while they were being made.
Not only did Art Lebedev need to find screens small enough to fit under each of its keys but it also needed to find a way for them to coexist with keys that you could actually type on. The final keyboard ended up being a bit of a fudge: the screens didn’t actually move. Instead, the company built a moving plastic keycap that moved around each screen. But even this solution had its challenges, Burbaev says. This plastic keycap needed to not only be transparent enough to show the display but also tinted enough to not reveal the ugly inner mechanism of each screen and durable enough to withstand scratches.
All of this meant the development process for the Optimus Maximus was long and difficult, and Wired featured the keyboard not once but twice in its annual vaporware roundups. Art Lebedev was unusually open about the troubled development process, cataloging its progress making the keyboard on a LiveJournal blog. We’re used to receiving such updates in an era of Kickstarter and crowdfunding, but the approach felt novel at the time — and it shows just how slowly development went. It took months just to arrive on a keycap design, studying various possibilities along the way. The company’s first OLED manufacturer went bust before managing to deliver its pricy $10 keys, forcing Art Lebedev to hunt down a new Taiwanese supplier.
Finally, after years of development, hundreds of preorders, and dozens upon dozens of blog posts and concept images hyping up every aspect of the idea, the Optimus Maximus began shipping in February 2008.

What was this legendary keyboard actually like to use? In a word: “Terrible.”
“Let’s put it this way, we sit around and type all day long and this thing wore us out in about 30 seconds to a minute,” Engadget wrote after its first few weeks of testing. “The Optimus Maximus is terrible for touch-typing,” CNET concurred in its July 2008 review, noting that “the tightly packed keys make for lots of mistaken presses, and the mushy responsiveness slows down your words per minute.” In 2018, retro keyboard YouTuber Chyrosran22 called the keys “fishy fuck nuggets with a capital F” that are “extremely terrible” to type on.
These are issues that would be hard to forgive on any keyboard, but the Optimus Maximus also carried a $1,600 price tag in 2008 (north of $2,200 in today’s money). At that price, it had to be perfect, and the reality was far from it.
So Art Lebedev came up with another, cheaper way to make screen-filled keys work: one big screen. In 2012, it released the Optimus Popularis, a more compact keyboard that placed one large LCD display under all its transparent keys, with no need for any individual OLED screens or mechanical switches underneath. Instead, you’d type on lenses that would activate the keyboard’s single large screen, with each lens held floating in place by an aluminum frame. This basic idea is the key to every LCD keyboard we’ve seen since, from the Elgato Stream Deck to Razer’s discontinued Switchblade UI to the Finalmouse Centerpiece.
Yet fundamental problems remained. Not only was Art Lebedev’s new keyboard only slightly cheaper (it still cost north of $1,000) but also the Optimus Popularis was an absolute pig to type on. Art Lebedev was kind enough to send one to us for the purposes of this story, and we had ambitions to write this entire piece on the Popularis. But after half an hour, we gave up. It was a struggle getting the keyboard to register keypresses in the first place. Its space bar, in particular, is a nightmare that refuses to actuate unless you press it firmly enough in exactly the right spot, which is nearly impossible if you want to type at any sort of speed.
Even in 2024, in an era of phones that are not just smart but that can literally fold in half, we still find ourselves wishing Art Lebedev had been able to deliver on its 2005 concept images. It’s a really beautiful idea with huge amounts of promise. But even if Art Lebedev never truly delivered, it did a lot of the vital iteration to get there.

Four years after the Optimus Popularis’ failure, a strikingly similar gadget appeared on Indiegogo. The “Infinitton” contained just 15 individually customizable LCD keys, much like another old Art Lebedev concept dubbed the Optimus Aux. But this time, gadget lovers didn’t praise the idea to high heaven — the keypad missed its first crowdfunding goal of $30,000 and barely made that money a year later on Kickstarter.

But for Taiwanese manufacturer iDisplay, the Infinitton was far from a disappointment — it was a decade-old idea finally paying off.
That’s because iDisplay was the company that built those OLED and LCD keys for Art Lebedev all those years ago, the Russian design firm and Elgato both confirmed to The Verge. It never stopped working on them. “The success of Optimus Maximus kept me interested to continue the research and development of the built-in screen keys,” iDisplay cofounder Jen Wen Sun tells us via translated email. By 2017, he’d racked up over a dozen patents on the tech and says he sold the screens into broadcast equipment, airplanes, and cars along the way.
The company was originally formed in 1998 and worked on buttons for the gambling industry, he tells us, surviving off small-scale R&D projects while he kept trying to sell casinos on his push-button screens. Casino owner Bally’s was once interested, he says, but a deal never panned out.
Back in Germany, the Infinitton caught the attention of Elgato’s Julian Fest, who was researching how to turn his screen-equipped streaming controller idea into a reality. “As we’re thinking about this controller, this crowdfunding campaign comes out and we’re looking at this box and we’re like ‘Oh, this is perfect. We need to talk to these guys,’” Fest recalls.
By the time Elgato started talking to iDisplay, the Taiwanese company had already solved many of the hardware challenges needed to turn a thousand dollar-plus keyboard into a relatively affordable $149 computer accessory. It could use small off-the-shelf screens similar to what you might find in a car’s infotainment system. And iDisplay had a simpler job on its hands crafting the Stream Deck’s bubble wrap-esque button feel because it didn’t have to worry about people needing to type at 50-plus words per minute. That feel had been crafted before Elgato ever touched it.

Elgato essentially turned the Infinitton into the Stream Deck. That first Stream Deck, Fest says, “was really just on a hardware level an iteration of what these guys did.” Look at the original Stream Deck next to the Infinitton, and the resemblance is clear; it’s the same three-by-five grid of buttons turned on its side and with a new housing. “We tried to keep it as simple as possible,” Fest says.
The way Fest describes it, the main thing Elgato brought to the table when it started working with iDisplay was focus. In its Kickstarter campaign for the Infinitton, iDisplay pitched the accessory to anyone and everyone. It was for designers, traders, and musicians. It was for architects, engineers, and programmers. It was for video designers and photographers and business professionals.
In contrast, Elgato knew exactly who it wanted its Stream Deck to be for: streamers. It held a six-month private beta to collect feedback from its intended users, and it poured a lot of effort into making sure the device integrated nicely with OBS, the industry-standard streaming software. “The big new component then was building software that was tailor made for live streamers,” Fest says. “What we did is we took something existing and just repositioned it for an audience that actually understood and appreciated what this thing could do.”

That’s not to say Elgato didn’t have any challenges to overcome while developing the Stream Deck with iDisplay. Fest says a big one was ensuring that the Stream Deck could not only send information to a computer but also receive it back and show it to the user. Without being able to stay in sync like this, the Stream Deck risked being the glorified macro pad that critics claimed it was. “If you fire off a hotkey, you don’t know if that action succeeded,” Fest says. “What we wanted to ensure is that if you change a scene in OBS you can clearly see on your device [that] that scene is now active and the other one is not. Or if you mute yourself, you’re muted, and we can guarantee that you’re muted because we’re talking natively to OBS.”
The approach worked. iDisplay had sold just a few hundred units of its Infinitton via its crowdfunding campaigns, but the Stream Deck quickly became a staple of the Twitch streamer’s toolkit after its release in 2017. A year later, Corsair acquired Elgato for an undisclosed sum — and in 2022, it bought iDisplay, locking down its LCD keys.
Other companies have taken notice. In 2022, Razer introduced the Stream Controller, and a year after that, competing PC accessory manufacturer Logitech snatched up Loupedeck, which had worked with Razer on the rival streaming accessory.
Much like when it morphed its TV tuner into a game recorder, Elgato developed an audience for a technology rather than the other way around. It had been the missing piece of the puzzle since the beginning. But ironically, the audience for the Stream Deck has since expanded almost as wide as the one iDisplay hoped would embrace the Infinitton.
Fest says he knows of Stream Decks being used in the hundreds by organizations ranging from call centers to police dispatcher services. The UK’s Virgin Atlantic airline uses dozens of Stream Decks to simplify communications with pilots and air traffic controllers. Even SpaceX was an early customer, Fest says. (SpaceX did not respond to The Verge’s request for comment.) The simple genius of the Stream Deck is that it made LCD keys peripheral, useful for anything where you need a button that dynamically advertises what it’s doing.

Art Lebedev was right about one thing: there was indeed a market of people prepared to pay top dollar for premium-quality keyboards. But in retrospect, the Russian design studio bet that the market would go in the opposite direction of the one it actually went in. Instead of a software-based future filled with screens, keyboards embraced hardware, rediscovering mechanical key switches that had been around since the ’80s. Users began fixating on typing feel, seeking out tactile switches and clacky keycaps. The many compromises of LCD keys might have been too much to ask.
But Elgato didn’t need to find a balance between typing feel and screen because its Stream Deck aimed to complement a traditional keyboard, rather than replace it. “Everybody has opinions on how Stream Deck’s keys feel. Some absolutely love it. Some say it’s way too mushy. But for everybody, it’s usable,” Fest says. You can forgive a key that feels mushy if you only need to press it to mute yourself while streaming.
Which is not to say there’s no space for the kind of screen-based design that Art Lebedev and iDisplay worked to create. The gaming accessories company Finalmouse appears to be banking on exactly that with its forthcoming Centerpiece keyboard, which draws on the single-screen approach of the Popularis but combines it with a set of actual mechanical switches — translucent ones — to retain the feel of a mechanical keyboard.
Like the Optimus Maximus, the Centerpiece has already blown past its first promised ship dates and is entering the vaporware realm. But if it does arrive, perhaps function and form will finally be aligned.
As for Art Lebedev, it doesn’t consider the Optimus keyboard a failure. “You could argue how successful the project was in terms of return on investment,” Burbaev says, telling us how much business it drummed up for the studio even a decade later. Sometimes a new client would admit that they, too, were fixated by those concept images back when they were a kid.

Image: Richard Parry for The Verge

Back in 2005, a small firm offered a tantalizing vision of the future of computer keyboards.

What if your keyboard was filled with tiny screens that showed you exactly what any given press would do, each built into a crystal-clear key? The keys would morph and shift as you needed, transforming from letters and numbers to full-color icons and app shortcuts, depending on what you were doing.

Readers and tech bloggers adored the idea. “It’s about time someone shook up this stagnant keyboard market,” declared Engadget. “The concept is fantastic,” wrote Gizmodo. Slashdot lit up.

The keyboard was just a concept, dreamed up by Art Lebedev, a Russian design firm, and it was an ambitious idea at that: called the Optimus Maximus, it would require over 100 built-in screens using display technology that wasn’t readily available at the time. With all the excitement, the firm decided to make it real.

The journey to create the Optimus Maximus would take years and end in multiple commercial failures. But Art Lebedev’s vision and the technology created along the way would live on and ultimately find widespread success — a success that’s been hidden inside another popular product: Elgato’s Stream Deck, a small desktop accessory covered in morphing, full-color keys.

By the time Elgato came to release its first Stream Deck in 2017, Art Lebedev’s Optimus keyboards had faded into history. But there’s more linking the two devices than a core idea. In fact, the Stream Deck hardware came from precisely the same company that developed the Optimus Maximus’ keys. In a very real sense, Art Lebedev’s work laid the foundations for what Elgato would go on to create.

In 2010, Elgato was in “crisis mode.”

For around a decade, the German video capture company had been selling its TV tuners to people who wanted to watch and record live television via a connected computer. But by 2010, it was clear that the market for such devices was disappearing fast. On one side, broadcast TV was becoming increasingly encrypted, limiting what Elgato’s devices could do. On the other, the streaming revolution, led by Netflix and YouTube, was cutting out the humble TV tuner entirely.

“You’re on a sinking ship, you’ve got to figure out what you’re going to do,” recalls Elgato’s Julian Fest, whose parents originally founded the company in 1999.

Elgato started to take a hard look at its business, and it noticed one number that didn’t quite make sense.

Elgato knew how many TV tuners it had sold, but people had been registering far more copies of the company’s EyeTV recording software than its own customers would need. When it emailed those customers, it found out they were using a rival piece of hardware, the Hauppauge HD-PVR — and not to record broadcast TV. They were recording gameplay from their PlayStations to put up on YouTube. Right under Elgato’s nose was a new market opportunity.

Armed with over a decade’s worth of video encoding knowledge from its TV tuner days, a direct connection to Hauppauge’s customers, and Hauppauge’s own quarterly earnings reports to know just how many HD-PVRs it sold, Elgato decided to release a rival capture product specifically tailored to gamers. The result was the Game Capture HD, released in 2012.

Three years later, when Fest took over as Elgato’s general manager, it seemed clear that the market for online gameplay videos was poised to explode. With Amazon acquiring the live streaming service Twitch for almost $1 billion in 2014, Fest was on the lookout for ways Elgato could double down. Perhaps it could offer a way to not just capture gameplay footage but also to help Twitch streamers control their broadcasts in the moment.

“If you looked at the state of Twitch and live streaming at the end of 2015, it was intriguing, but it was also kind of boring,” Fest tells The Verge. “Everybody’s stream was like, ‘Here’s my gameplay, here’s my webcam,’ and that’s it.” He figured that simplicity was because of all the different jobs a streamer has to handle during broadcasts: between playing the game, reading the chat, and entertaining an audience, it’d be difficult to also run a dynamic broadcast filled with changing layouts and eye-catching transitions.

Unless, Fest thought, there was a way to offer advanced broadcast controls without distracting a streamer from other tasks. The company found its answer in a popular German TV show where the host had a so-called “nipple board” of buttons in front of him, built into a giant desk. “Every time you pressed one of these buttons, it would play a funny clip that his team had found on TV,” Fest recalls. The team wondered if Elgato could use a similar array of buttons to control a livestream.

Elgato had its idea — now, it needed to find the right buttons to make it a reality.

Art Lebedev had never intended to make a massive splash in the keyboard business. Timur Burbaev, who served as the keyboard’s industrial designer, tells The Verge that the initial idea came about shortly after he joined in 2003. The keyboard was just meant to be a concept, similar to its Lavatrix washing machine, to show off the studio’s design chops and drum up more business in the free time between projects.

In July 2005, the company released a series of concept images of what it called the “Optimus keyboard.” It had the same basic layout as a full-size computer keyboard but with a twist: “Every key of the Optimus keyboard is a stand-alone display showing exactly what it is controlling at this very moment,” the website still reads.

One image shows how the keys could change to show an array of Photoshop tools; another shows dedicated controls for Quake. (This was 2005, after all.) On the left edge of the keyboard are macro keys that can be programmed to open specific programs, illustrated with a series of delightfully 2005-era logos like Internet Explorer and QuickTime. Although the images are renders rather than real photographs, the close-ups make an effort to show individual pixels present on the screens of the keys, a small imperfection that provides a tantalizing hint of reality. Nearly two decades later, the imaginary device still looks fantastic.

It was hard to ignore the amount of interest the design was getting. The team called an emergency meeting to discuss. “Back then, we just realized that if you get such a positive response, then let’s risk it and just produce it,” Burbaev says. It was “a clear indication” that the team should try and make it for real. The long and difficult journey of producing what would become the Optimus Maximus had begun. “No one imagined how much time and energy and especially investment it would take,” Burbaev says.

A big early decision was working out what kind of screen technology to use. The first iPod with a color display had only just been released, and the iPhone had yet to make its debut. Candybar-style phones like the Nokia 1110 and Motorola C139 reigned supreme. Art Lebedev thought LCD screens of the era were too dim and offered terrible black levels, while E Ink screens had terrible response times and no backlighting at all. OLED seemed like the best choice.

But this was long before OLED displays were routinely shipping in mainstream smartwatches, smartphones, and TVs. “The problem with OLED displays was that you could potentially find such a small OLED display in 2006 but a) it would cost you a fortune and b) it would have a massive resolution,” Burbaev says. They were meant for military users to show tactical information like maps on tiny screens, not Quake icons on a keyboard.

Art Lebedev decided its “only option” was to dive headfirst into the OLED display business. Burbaev believes his was one of the first companies to ship a product with these kinds of small, low-cost, low-resolution OLED screens. Doing so involved placing what Burbaev describes as a “very strange” order with a Taiwanese manufacturer with some prior experience. He adds that two managers from Art Lebedev ended up living in Taiwan for half a year while they were being made.

Not only did Art Lebedev need to find screens small enough to fit under each of its keys but it also needed to find a way for them to coexist with keys that you could actually type on. The final keyboard ended up being a bit of a fudge: the screens didn’t actually move. Instead, the company built a moving plastic keycap that moved around each screen. But even this solution had its challenges, Burbaev says. This plastic keycap needed to not only be transparent enough to show the display but also tinted enough to not reveal the ugly inner mechanism of each screen and durable enough to withstand scratches.

All of this meant the development process for the Optimus Maximus was long and difficult, and Wired featured the keyboard not once but twice in its annual vaporware roundups. Art Lebedev was unusually open about the troubled development process, cataloging its progress making the keyboard on a LiveJournal blog. We’re used to receiving such updates in an era of Kickstarter and crowdfunding, but the approach felt novel at the time — and it shows just how slowly development went. It took months just to arrive on a keycap design, studying various possibilities along the way. The company’s first OLED manufacturer went bust before managing to deliver its pricy $10 keys, forcing Art Lebedev to hunt down a new Taiwanese supplier.

Finally, after years of development, hundreds of preorders, and dozens upon dozens of blog posts and concept images hyping up every aspect of the idea, the Optimus Maximus began shipping in February 2008.

What was this legendary keyboard actually like to use? In a word: “Terrible.”

“Let’s put it this way, we sit around and type all day long and this thing wore us out in about 30 seconds to a minute,” Engadget wrote after its first few weeks of testing. “The Optimus Maximus is terrible for touch-typing,” CNET concurred in its July 2008 review, noting that “the tightly packed keys make for lots of mistaken presses, and the mushy responsiveness slows down your words per minute.” In 2018, retro keyboard YouTuber Chyrosran22 called the keys “fishy fuck nuggets with a capital F” that are “extremely terrible” to type on.

These are issues that would be hard to forgive on any keyboard, but the Optimus Maximus also carried a $1,600 price tag in 2008 (north of $2,200 in today’s money). At that price, it had to be perfect, and the reality was far from it.

So Art Lebedev came up with another, cheaper way to make screen-filled keys work: one big screen. In 2012, it released the Optimus Popularis, a more compact keyboard that placed one large LCD display under all its transparent keys, with no need for any individual OLED screens or mechanical switches underneath. Instead, you’d type on lenses that would activate the keyboard’s single large screen, with each lens held floating in place by an aluminum frame. This basic idea is the key to every LCD keyboard we’ve seen since, from the Elgato Stream Deck to Razer’s discontinued Switchblade UI to the Finalmouse Centerpiece.

Yet fundamental problems remained. Not only was Art Lebedev’s new keyboard only slightly cheaper (it still cost north of $1,000) but also the Optimus Popularis was an absolute pig to type on. Art Lebedev was kind enough to send one to us for the purposes of this story, and we had ambitions to write this entire piece on the Popularis. But after half an hour, we gave up. It was a struggle getting the keyboard to register keypresses in the first place. Its space bar, in particular, is a nightmare that refuses to actuate unless you press it firmly enough in exactly the right spot, which is nearly impossible if you want to type at any sort of speed.

Even in 2024, in an era of phones that are not just smart but that can literally fold in half, we still find ourselves wishing Art Lebedev had been able to deliver on its 2005 concept images. It’s a really beautiful idea with huge amounts of promise. But even if Art Lebedev never truly delivered, it did a lot of the vital iteration to get there.

Four years after the Optimus Popularis’ failure, a strikingly similar gadget appeared on Indiegogo. The “Infinitton” contained just 15 individually customizable LCD keys, much like another old Art Lebedev concept dubbed the Optimus Aux. But this time, gadget lovers didn’t praise the idea to high heaven — the keypad missed its first crowdfunding goal of $30,000 and barely made that money a year later on Kickstarter.

But for Taiwanese manufacturer iDisplay, the Infinitton was far from a disappointment — it was a decade-old idea finally paying off.

That’s because iDisplay was the company that built those OLED and LCD keys for Art Lebedev all those years ago, the Russian design firm and Elgato both confirmed to The Verge. It never stopped working on them. “The success of Optimus Maximus kept me interested to continue the research and development of the built-in screen keys,” iDisplay cofounder Jen Wen Sun tells us via translated email. By 2017, he’d racked up over a dozen patents on the tech and says he sold the screens into broadcast equipment, airplanes, and cars along the way.

The company was originally formed in 1998 and worked on buttons for the gambling industry, he tells us, surviving off small-scale R&D projects while he kept trying to sell casinos on his push-button screens. Casino owner Bally’s was once interested, he says, but a deal never panned out.

Back in Germany, the Infinitton caught the attention of Elgato’s Julian Fest, who was researching how to turn his screen-equipped streaming controller idea into a reality. “As we’re thinking about this controller, this crowdfunding campaign comes out and we’re looking at this box and we’re like ‘Oh, this is perfect. We need to talk to these guys,’” Fest recalls.

By the time Elgato started talking to iDisplay, the Taiwanese company had already solved many of the hardware challenges needed to turn a thousand dollar-plus keyboard into a relatively affordable $149 computer accessory. It could use small off-the-shelf screens similar to what you might find in a car’s infotainment system. And iDisplay had a simpler job on its hands crafting the Stream Deck’s bubble wrap-esque button feel because it didn’t have to worry about people needing to type at 50-plus words per minute. That feel had been crafted before Elgato ever touched it.

Elgato essentially turned the Infinitton into the Stream Deck. That first Stream Deck, Fest says, “was really just on a hardware level an iteration of what these guys did.” Look at the original Stream Deck next to the Infinitton, and the resemblance is clear; it’s the same three-by-five grid of buttons turned on its side and with a new housing. “We tried to keep it as simple as possible,” Fest says.

The way Fest describes it, the main thing Elgato brought to the table when it started working with iDisplay was focus. In its Kickstarter campaign for the Infinitton, iDisplay pitched the accessory to anyone and everyone. It was for designers, traders, and musicians. It was for architects, engineers, and programmers. It was for video designers and photographers and business professionals.

In contrast, Elgato knew exactly who it wanted its Stream Deck to be for: streamers. It held a six-month private beta to collect feedback from its intended users, and it poured a lot of effort into making sure the device integrated nicely with OBS, the industry-standard streaming software. “The big new component then was building software that was tailor made for live streamers,” Fest says. “What we did is we took something existing and just repositioned it for an audience that actually understood and appreciated what this thing could do.”

That’s not to say Elgato didn’t have any challenges to overcome while developing the Stream Deck with iDisplay. Fest says a big one was ensuring that the Stream Deck could not only send information to a computer but also receive it back and show it to the user. Without being able to stay in sync like this, the Stream Deck risked being the glorified macro pad that critics claimed it was. “If you fire off a hotkey, you don’t know if that action succeeded,” Fest says. “What we wanted to ensure is that if you change a scene in OBS you can clearly see on your device [that] that scene is now active and the other one is not. Or if you mute yourself, you’re muted, and we can guarantee that you’re muted because we’re talking natively to OBS.”

The approach worked. iDisplay had sold just a few hundred units of its Infinitton via its crowdfunding campaigns, but the Stream Deck quickly became a staple of the Twitch streamer’s toolkit after its release in 2017. A year later, Corsair acquired Elgato for an undisclosed sum — and in 2022, it bought iDisplay, locking down its LCD keys.

Other companies have taken notice. In 2022, Razer introduced the Stream Controller, and a year after that, competing PC accessory manufacturer Logitech snatched up Loupedeck, which had worked with Razer on the rival streaming accessory.

Much like when it morphed its TV tuner into a game recorder, Elgato developed an audience for a technology rather than the other way around. It had been the missing piece of the puzzle since the beginning. But ironically, the audience for the Stream Deck has since expanded almost as wide as the one iDisplay hoped would embrace the Infinitton.

Fest says he knows of Stream Decks being used in the hundreds by organizations ranging from call centers to police dispatcher services. The UK’s Virgin Atlantic airline uses dozens of Stream Decks to simplify communications with pilots and air traffic controllers. Even SpaceX was an early customer, Fest says. (SpaceX did not respond to The Verge’s request for comment.) The simple genius of the Stream Deck is that it made LCD keys peripheral, useful for anything where you need a button that dynamically advertises what it’s doing.

Art Lebedev was right about one thing: there was indeed a market of people prepared to pay top dollar for premium-quality keyboards. But in retrospect, the Russian design studio bet that the market would go in the opposite direction of the one it actually went in. Instead of a software-based future filled with screens, keyboards embraced hardware, rediscovering mechanical key switches that had been around since the ’80s. Users began fixating on typing feel, seeking out tactile switches and clacky keycaps. The many compromises of LCD keys might have been too much to ask.

But Elgato didn’t need to find a balance between typing feel and screen because its Stream Deck aimed to complement a traditional keyboard, rather than replace it. “Everybody has opinions on how Stream Deck’s keys feel. Some absolutely love it. Some say it’s way too mushy. But for everybody, it’s usable,” Fest says. You can forgive a key that feels mushy if you only need to press it to mute yourself while streaming.

Which is not to say there’s no space for the kind of screen-based design that Art Lebedev and iDisplay worked to create. The gaming accessories company Finalmouse appears to be banking on exactly that with its forthcoming Centerpiece keyboard, which draws on the single-screen approach of the Popularis but combines it with a set of actual mechanical switches — translucent ones — to retain the feel of a mechanical keyboard.

Like the Optimus Maximus, the Centerpiece has already blown past its first promised ship dates and is entering the vaporware realm. But if it does arrive, perhaps function and form will finally be aligned.

As for Art Lebedev, it doesn’t consider the Optimus keyboard a failure. “You could argue how successful the project was in terms of return on investment,” Burbaev says, telling us how much business it drummed up for the studio even a decade later. Sometimes a new client would admit that they, too, were fixated by those concept images back when they were a kid.

Read More 

The Verge

UK regulators are now formally investigating Microsoft’s hiring of Inflection AI staff, months after most of Inflection’s staff joined Microsoft’s new AI division. The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is now opening up a phase one merger investigation into the partnership, with a September 11th deadline over whether the investigation will progress into a second phase.
If the case progresses to the phase two stage, then it could present a stumbling block for Microsoft’s AI ambitions. The CMA last signaled a more in-depth review of Microsoft’s $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard in 2022, eventually forcing the company to restructure its deal and give up key cloud gaming rights in the UK and many other markets worldwide. It’s still early days for the CMA’s Inflection AI investigation, but the results could have an impact far beyond just the UK.
Microsoft hired Google DeepMind cofounder Mustafa Suleyman as part of the Inflection AI staff hirings. Suleyman left Google in 2022 to cofound Inflection AI, and he’s now CEO of Microsoft AI.
Regulators in the UK and EU have been increasingly looking at the AI partnerships and investments that Big Tech are making. The CMA also signaled interest in Microsoft’s Mistral AI partnership but decided that it didn’t qualify for investigation under its merger rules.
Microsoft was also recently charged with EU antitrust violations for bundling its Teams app with Office 365 and Microsoft 365 subscriptions. If Microsoft is found guilty of antitrust violations in the EU, the firm could face a fine of up to 10 percent of the company’s annual worldwide turnover. Microsoft also recently reached a settlement with a cloud industry group in Europe to avoid a potential antitrust battle.

The Verge

UK regulators are now formally investigating Microsoft’s hiring of Inflection AI staff, months after most of Inflection’s staff joined Microsoft’s new AI division. The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is now opening up a phase one merger investigation into the partnership, with a September 11th deadline over whether the investigation will progress into a second phase.

If the case progresses to the phase two stage, then it could present a stumbling block for Microsoft’s AI ambitions. The CMA last signaled a more in-depth review of Microsoft’s $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard in 2022, eventually forcing the company to restructure its deal and give up key cloud gaming rights in the UK and many other markets worldwide. It’s still early days for the CMA’s Inflection AI investigation, but the results could have an impact far beyond just the UK.

Microsoft hired Google DeepMind cofounder Mustafa Suleyman as part of the Inflection AI staff hirings. Suleyman left Google in 2022 to cofound Inflection AI, and he’s now CEO of Microsoft AI.

Regulators in the UK and EU have been increasingly looking at the AI partnerships and investments that Big Tech are making. The CMA also signaled interest in Microsoft’s Mistral AI partnership but decided that it didn’t qualify for investigation under its merger rules.

Microsoft was also recently charged with EU antitrust violations for bundling its Teams app with Office 365 and Microsoft 365 subscriptions. If Microsoft is found guilty of antitrust violations in the EU, the firm could face a fine of up to 10 percent of the company’s annual worldwide turnover. Microsoft also recently reached a settlement with a cloud industry group in Europe to avoid a potential antitrust battle.

Read More 

It’s your phone. On your Mac. That’s really the whole thing. | Image: David Pierce / The Verge

One of the surprise hits of Apple’s WWDC 2024 was a new feature for desktops and laptops. In Sequoia, the new operating system due this fall and now in public beta, you can mirror your phone to your Mac.
I’ve been testing the new feature for a bit, and it really is what it sounds like. You open up the phone mirroring app, and it presents you to… your iPhone. Rounded corners and everything. You click on the bottom bar to go home and click and drag to go between apps, click with your mouse, and type with your keyboard. The only chrome in the app appears when you hover your mouse up at the top; there’s a button for going home and a button for opening the app switcher. You can’t even resize the window, which is currently way too small on my 4K monitor. It’s just your iPhone. On your Mac.
I know what you’re thinking, and yes: this would all be better if the Mac had a touchscreen or if it worked with your iPad. Alas. Even in our decidedly lesser reality, I’ve been testing the new feature, and I’ve discovered a surprising number of reasons it’s handy to be able to use my iPhone from my laptop. I’ve fired up phone mirroring to tweak my smart thermostat, which you can only do from the mobile app. I’ve used it repeatedly to AirDrop things between my devices, which I can now do without switching back and forth between them. I can now respond to texts from my work computer without logging in to iMessage on my work computer and control my music and podcasts without constantly digging my phone out of my pocket. I like the Apple Journal app, and now I type in it a lot more from my laptop than on my phone.
I think I’ve used it most for managing notifications, though. When you start mirroring your phone, you also start mirroring its notifications, so everything that buzzes your iPhone also buzzes your Mac. I never realized how often I grab my phone off the desk even while I’m sitting at my computer, and mirroring requires much less context switching. It has also made me acutely aware of just how many buzzes I get — if you use phone mirroring, be prepared to turn off a lot of notifications.

Image: David Pierce / The Verge
Phone mirroring only works if your phone is locked — but then connects pretty quickly.

I was able to get phone mirroring working pretty quickly using my iPhone 15 Pro running the iOS 18 beta and my M1-powered Mac Mini running Sequoia. You have to input your passcodes a couple of times, and it’ll only work if you’re logged in to the same Apple account on both devices, but it only took me a couple of minutes to get going. (Some of my colleagues have had a harder time, though, and as always with beta software, you should tread very carefully.) There is one important part of the setup process to mention, though: you decide early on whether you’ll need to enter a password every time you want to access your phone. Unfettered access to a phone is a big deal, obviously, so choose wisely.
You can only mirror your phone when it’s locked — your phone shows a message that it’s being mirrored, and as soon as you unlock it, your Mac will say “iPhone Mirroring has ended due to iPhone use.” If you’re using mirroring on a MacBook, the swiping and scrolling gestures map pretty cleanly to your trackpad. Ditto if you’re on a desktop and using a Magic Trackpad or Magic Mouse. But I use a Logitech mouse, and that means a lot of stuff is broken. I can’t scroll in a lot of apps, and I can’t swipe left or right anywhere. When I open TikTok, I am stuck on the first video in my feed forever and ever. I hope Apple will support more devices or allow other devices to support mirroring, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
Other than the input issues, most apps work like you’d expect. Not all, though. Hit “play” on a Netflix movie and the screen will rotate to full-screen landscape and show you nothing but a black screen. Netflix and other streaming apps clearly see your mirrored phone as an unsanctioned display and just won’t allow it. I’ve also had trouble getting the Phone app to mirror properly, which is odd — sometimes it’ll work, but other times, it just opens a black screen. That might be beta stuff, but I wouldn’t bet on the Netflix thing changing anytime soon.

Image: David Pierce / The Verge
The phone mirroring app has a tiny bit of chrome but almost no options and almost no buttons.

The biggest thing missing from phone mirroring right now is drag and drop between devices, which would instantly be the best thing about it. Apple says it’s coming later this year, and I hope it’s easy to grab photos, files, and everything else from my phone. I’d also like to be able to copy text or links on my Mac and paste them onto my iPhone, which doesn’t work right now. There are ways notifications could work better, too: when you click an iPhone notification, it’ll always open the relevant iPhone app, even if you have the corresponding app on your Mac.
I had high hopes for phone mirroring as a remote monitoring setup for my iPhone camera, but while mirroring, you can’t access the iPhone’s camera or microphone at all. You also can’t use phone mirroring and Continuity Camera simultaneously, which is a shame because “I need something on my phone but my phone is currently my webcam” is a thing I encounter all the time and is the main reason I don’t use Continuity Camera.
Apple’s work with Handoff and Continuity has for years felt very cool but always slightly unfinished; this is very much the same. It works well, but there are a couple of obvious things it can’t quite do yet.
We’re still a few months away from macOS Sequoia and iOS 18 launching for real, so there’s time for Apple to add and improve some of the features in phone mirroring. Even in a short time, it has already become a frequent part of my daily Mac routine. I’m using my phone the same amount, but I’m looking at it a lot less. My Mac gets all my notifications now, and whenever I need to do something on my phone, I just fire up the phone mirroring app. It has felt for a while like Apple is trying to smush all its operating systems together to make all your devices feel like one device. Phone mirroring is a simple step in that direction, but it’s a seriously useful one.

It’s your phone. On your Mac. That’s really the whole thing. | Image: David Pierce / The Verge

One of the surprise hits of Apple’s WWDC 2024 was a new feature for desktops and laptops. In Sequoia, the new operating system due this fall and now in public beta, you can mirror your phone to your Mac.

I’ve been testing the new feature for a bit, and it really is what it sounds like. You open up the phone mirroring app, and it presents you to… your iPhone. Rounded corners and everything. You click on the bottom bar to go home and click and drag to go between apps, click with your mouse, and type with your keyboard. The only chrome in the app appears when you hover your mouse up at the top; there’s a button for going home and a button for opening the app switcher. You can’t even resize the window, which is currently way too small on my 4K monitor. It’s just your iPhone. On your Mac.

I know what you’re thinking, and yes: this would all be better if the Mac had a touchscreen or if it worked with your iPad. Alas. Even in our decidedly lesser reality, I’ve been testing the new feature, and I’ve discovered a surprising number of reasons it’s handy to be able to use my iPhone from my laptop. I’ve fired up phone mirroring to tweak my smart thermostat, which you can only do from the mobile app. I’ve used it repeatedly to AirDrop things between my devices, which I can now do without switching back and forth between them. I can now respond to texts from my work computer without logging in to iMessage on my work computer and control my music and podcasts without constantly digging my phone out of my pocket. I like the Apple Journal app, and now I type in it a lot more from my laptop than on my phone.

I think I’ve used it most for managing notifications, though. When you start mirroring your phone, you also start mirroring its notifications, so everything that buzzes your iPhone also buzzes your Mac. I never realized how often I grab my phone off the desk even while I’m sitting at my computer, and mirroring requires much less context switching. It has also made me acutely aware of just how many buzzes I get — if you use phone mirroring, be prepared to turn off a lot of notifications.

Image: David Pierce / The Verge
Phone mirroring only works if your phone is locked — but then connects pretty quickly.

I was able to get phone mirroring working pretty quickly using my iPhone 15 Pro running the iOS 18 beta and my M1-powered Mac Mini running Sequoia. You have to input your passcodes a couple of times, and it’ll only work if you’re logged in to the same Apple account on both devices, but it only took me a couple of minutes to get going. (Some of my colleagues have had a harder time, though, and as always with beta software, you should tread very carefully.) There is one important part of the setup process to mention, though: you decide early on whether you’ll need to enter a password every time you want to access your phone. Unfettered access to a phone is a big deal, obviously, so choose wisely.

You can only mirror your phone when it’s locked — your phone shows a message that it’s being mirrored, and as soon as you unlock it, your Mac will say “iPhone Mirroring has ended due to iPhone use.” If you’re using mirroring on a MacBook, the swiping and scrolling gestures map pretty cleanly to your trackpad. Ditto if you’re on a desktop and using a Magic Trackpad or Magic Mouse. But I use a Logitech mouse, and that means a lot of stuff is broken. I can’t scroll in a lot of apps, and I can’t swipe left or right anywhere. When I open TikTok, I am stuck on the first video in my feed forever and ever. I hope Apple will support more devices or allow other devices to support mirroring, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

Other than the input issues, most apps work like you’d expect. Not all, though. Hit “play” on a Netflix movie and the screen will rotate to full-screen landscape and show you nothing but a black screen. Netflix and other streaming apps clearly see your mirrored phone as an unsanctioned display and just won’t allow it. I’ve also had trouble getting the Phone app to mirror properly, which is odd — sometimes it’ll work, but other times, it just opens a black screen. That might be beta stuff, but I wouldn’t bet on the Netflix thing changing anytime soon.

Image: David Pierce / The Verge
The phone mirroring app has a tiny bit of chrome but almost no options and almost no buttons.

The biggest thing missing from phone mirroring right now is drag and drop between devices, which would instantly be the best thing about it. Apple says it’s coming later this year, and I hope it’s easy to grab photos, files, and everything else from my phone. I’d also like to be able to copy text or links on my Mac and paste them onto my iPhone, which doesn’t work right now. There are ways notifications could work better, too: when you click an iPhone notification, it’ll always open the relevant iPhone app, even if you have the corresponding app on your Mac.

I had high hopes for phone mirroring as a remote monitoring setup for my iPhone camera, but while mirroring, you can’t access the iPhone’s camera or microphone at all. You also can’t use phone mirroring and Continuity Camera simultaneously, which is a shame because “I need something on my phone but my phone is currently my webcam” is a thing I encounter all the time and is the main reason I don’t use Continuity Camera.

Apple’s work with Handoff and Continuity has for years felt very cool but always slightly unfinished; this is very much the same. It works well, but there are a couple of obvious things it can’t quite do yet.

We’re still a few months away from macOS Sequoia and iOS 18 launching for real, so there’s time for Apple to add and improve some of the features in phone mirroring. Even in a short time, it has already become a frequent part of my daily Mac routine. I’m using my phone the same amount, but I’m looking at it a lot less. My Mac gets all my notifications now, and whenever I need to do something on my phone, I just fire up the phone mirroring app. It has felt for a while like Apple is trying to smush all its operating systems together to make all your devices feel like one device. Phone mirroring is a simple step in that direction, but it’s a seriously useful one.

Read More 

Illustration by William Joel / The Verge

The photos aren’t blurry! As a longtime iPhone user married to a longtime Android user, I’ve spent years sending and receiving photos that come through both postage-stamp small and about as sharp as a pointillist painting. But a few minutes after I installed the iOS 18 beta on my iPhone 15 Pro, I asked Anna to send me a photo, and what came through was the blissfully high-res photo I’d hoped for. That, right there, is what I call an upgrade.
RCS support is just one of the new things coming in iOS 18, of course. At WWDC a few weeks ago, Apple talked a lot about homescreen customization, improvements to Siri, a revamped Photos app, and more. The company seems to have added support for RCS, a more modern and powerful messaging protocol that Google and others have adopted on Android, only as a begrudging gesture to regulators — it only mentioned the feature in passing, at the very end of its iOS announcements. But for many iPhone users, and certainly for the billions of Android users who interact with those iPhone users, RCS is a big deal.
RCS is not, however, a salve for all the world’s messaging problems. For one, the green bubble lives on. It’s not even a different shade when you’re using RCS; it’s still just a green bubble. The iPhone’s take on RCS is also not encrypted, because Apple is using the basic RCS standard — known as the RCS Universal Profile — and not Google’s more secure implementation. RCS is not “iMessage for Android.” It’s not going to convince the billions of WhatsApp users around the world to switch. It’s just “better SMS.” But it is much, much better SMS.

Image: David Pierce / The Verge
The bubbles are green, but the pictures are high-res!

When you’re RCS-ing, green-bubble texting gets a lot better. Both Android and iPhone users get typing indicators, read receipts, high-res media, and everything else you’d expect from a half-decent messaging app. Even the Tapback responses work properly now, as long as you’re using the standard options — !!, thumbs up, that sort of thing. In iOS 18, you can now send any emoji as a Tapback, which works fine between iPhones but now prompts that annoying “David reacted to ‘What do you want for dinner tonight’” text in Google Messages. Google will presumably fix that in time — the Messages app has been solving for annoying, iMessage-using iPhone users for a while — but for now, it’s a little wonky.
It appears Apple sees its messaging protocols as a three-tier system. Best-case scenario, it’s two Apple devices communicating, and Apple defaults to iMessage. If not, it goes to RCS. And if RCS isn’t available, either because carriers don’t support it or there’s no data service or for any other reason, it’ll fall back to lowly SMS. It’s smart of Apple to not ditch SMS entirely, but hopefully starting this fall, you’ll never need to use it again.

Image: David Pierce / The Verge
Sometimes it’s SMS, sometimes it’s RCS. It’s very confusing, but it usually works!

For now, though, I’m still in SMS land a lot. The first time you send someone a message from your iPhone, it seems to mostly send it as an SMS; as soon as they reply, some connection gets made, and it’s RCS from then on, at least until there’s a lull in the conversation and it seems to flip back to SMS. (You can always see what kind of message you’re sending in the text box itself.) I haven’t noticed any reliability or performance issues on my phone, though I do have my laptop and iPad both set up to send and receive texts, and I’ve found in my testing that both SMS and RCS messages send much more slowly than they did before. These are the sorts of interface details that often show up in these early betas and often — but not always — get ironed out before launch.
There are also still some things that don’t work at all and probably never will. I don’t have access to any of iOS 18’s new text formatting options when I’m in an RCS chat, for instance, and if I send a message with balloons it sends it with no balloons and a dumb addendum to the message that says “(sent with balloons).” You can’t use iMessage apps over RCS or do inline replies. Apple very much wants the iMessage experience to be better than RCS, and in iOS 18, it still very much is.
Still, RCS in iOS 18 is a huge win for texters everywhere. Users have been clamoring for a better cross-platform way to share photos and videos — Tim Cook’s infamous “buy your mom an iPhone” line was actually in response to a question about texting videos — and that’s now basically a solved problem. I know my wife read my text, and I can see my kid’s face in the video she sent me. That may not sound like much in the year 2024, but it’s kind of the dream.

Illustration by William Joel / The Verge

The photos aren’t blurry! As a longtime iPhone user married to a longtime Android user, I’ve spent years sending and receiving photos that come through both postage-stamp small and about as sharp as a pointillist painting. But a few minutes after I installed the iOS 18 beta on my iPhone 15 Pro, I asked Anna to send me a photo, and what came through was the blissfully high-res photo I’d hoped for. That, right there, is what I call an upgrade.

RCS support is just one of the new things coming in iOS 18, of course. At WWDC a few weeks ago, Apple talked a lot about homescreen customization, improvements to Siri, a revamped Photos app, and more. The company seems to have added support for RCS, a more modern and powerful messaging protocol that Google and others have adopted on Android, only as a begrudging gesture to regulators — it only mentioned the feature in passing, at the very end of its iOS announcements. But for many iPhone users, and certainly for the billions of Android users who interact with those iPhone users, RCS is a big deal.

RCS is not, however, a salve for all the world’s messaging problems. For one, the green bubble lives on. It’s not even a different shade when you’re using RCS; it’s still just a green bubble. The iPhone’s take on RCS is also not encrypted, because Apple is using the basic RCS standard — known as the RCS Universal Profile — and not Google’s more secure implementation. RCS is not “iMessage for Android.” It’s not going to convince the billions of WhatsApp users around the world to switch. It’s just “better SMS.” But it is much, much better SMS.

Image: David Pierce / The Verge
The bubbles are green, but the pictures are high-res!

When you’re RCS-ing, green-bubble texting gets a lot better. Both Android and iPhone users get typing indicators, read receipts, high-res media, and everything else you’d expect from a half-decent messaging app. Even the Tapback responses work properly now, as long as you’re using the standard options — !!, thumbs up, that sort of thing. In iOS 18, you can now send any emoji as a Tapback, which works fine between iPhones but now prompts that annoying “David reacted to ‘What do you want for dinner tonight’” text in Google Messages. Google will presumably fix that in time — the Messages app has been solving for annoying, iMessage-using iPhone users for a while — but for now, it’s a little wonky.

It appears Apple sees its messaging protocols as a three-tier system. Best-case scenario, it’s two Apple devices communicating, and Apple defaults to iMessage. If not, it goes to RCS. And if RCS isn’t available, either because carriers don’t support it or there’s no data service or for any other reason, it’ll fall back to lowly SMS. It’s smart of Apple to not ditch SMS entirely, but hopefully starting this fall, you’ll never need to use it again.

Image: David Pierce / The Verge
Sometimes it’s SMS, sometimes it’s RCS. It’s very confusing, but it usually works!

For now, though, I’m still in SMS land a lot. The first time you send someone a message from your iPhone, it seems to mostly send it as an SMS; as soon as they reply, some connection gets made, and it’s RCS from then on, at least until there’s a lull in the conversation and it seems to flip back to SMS. (You can always see what kind of message you’re sending in the text box itself.) I haven’t noticed any reliability or performance issues on my phone, though I do have my laptop and iPad both set up to send and receive texts, and I’ve found in my testing that both SMS and RCS messages send much more slowly than they did before. These are the sorts of interface details that often show up in these early betas and often — but not always — get ironed out before launch.

There are also still some things that don’t work at all and probably never will. I don’t have access to any of iOS 18’s new text formatting options when I’m in an RCS chat, for instance, and if I send a message with balloons it sends it with no balloons and a dumb addendum to the message that says “(sent with balloons).” You can’t use iMessage apps over RCS or do inline replies. Apple very much wants the iMessage experience to be better than RCS, and in iOS 18, it still very much is.

Still, RCS in iOS 18 is a huge win for texters everywhere. Users have been clamoring for a better cross-platform way to share photos and videos — Tim Cook’s infamous “buy your mom an iPhone” line was actually in response to a question about texting videos — and that’s now basically a solved problem. I know my wife read my text, and I can see my kid’s face in the video she sent me. That may not sound like much in the year 2024, but it’s kind of the dream.

Read More 

Image: Porsche

Porsche announced two new rear-wheel drive versions of the forthcoming Macan electric SUV, including a higher-powered, lighter-weight 4S model. Porsche said deliveries are expected to begin later this year.
When it was announced earlier this year, Porsche said the Macan EV would come in two trims: the Macan 4 and the Macan Turbo, both of which sport dual motors for all-wheel drive. Now, the company is adding two more versions in the hopes of widening its appeal.

Image: Porsche

The RWD Macan will only have one motor located in the rear axle. It’s the same motor as the one used in the Macan 4, with an output of 250kW, or 335 horsepower. Porsche says it will use a 480-amp pulse inverter with silicon carbide transistors “for increased efficiency.” While using Launch Control, it will get up to 265kW, or 355 horsepower. With 415 pound-feet of torque, the RWD version can hit zero to 60mph in 5.4 seconds and will have a maximum track speed of 136mph, Porsche says.
The RWD Macan will also have a 100kWh battery, 95kWh of which will be usable — same as the 4 and Turbo. It will also be the lightest model in the Macan lineup — 243 pounds lighter than the Macan 4, to be exact — which could help it get more range than the other versions. Porsche said it would disclose EPA-estimated ranges at a later date.

Image: Porsche

Meanwhile, the 4S will slot between the Macan 4 and Macan Turbo as a new higher-powered variant. With a rear-axle motor, it will have an output of 330kW (442hp), including a short power overboost of up to 380kW (509hp). With Launch Control, the maximum torque on the 4S is 578 pound-feet. The Macan 4S can accelerate from zero to 60mph in 3.9 seconds and has a top track speed of 149mph.
Porsche said the Macan EV will start at $77,295, which includes a $1,995 delivery fee but excludes tax, title, and dealership charges. The Macan 4S will start at $86,895, including the delivery fee.
The news of the new variants comes as sales of Porsche’s only EV in the US, the Taycan, have cratered, falling 48 percent year over year in the second quarter. A refreshed Taycan with better range and improved performance metrics is expected to arrive later this year.

Image: Porsche

Porsche announced two new rear-wheel drive versions of the forthcoming Macan electric SUV, including a higher-powered, lighter-weight 4S model. Porsche said deliveries are expected to begin later this year.

When it was announced earlier this year, Porsche said the Macan EV would come in two trims: the Macan 4 and the Macan Turbo, both of which sport dual motors for all-wheel drive. Now, the company is adding two more versions in the hopes of widening its appeal.

Image: Porsche

The RWD Macan will only have one motor located in the rear axle. It’s the same motor as the one used in the Macan 4, with an output of 250kW, or 335 horsepower. Porsche says it will use a 480-amp pulse inverter with silicon carbide transistors “for increased efficiency.” While using Launch Control, it will get up to 265kW, or 355 horsepower. With 415 pound-feet of torque, the RWD version can hit zero to 60mph in 5.4 seconds and will have a maximum track speed of 136mph, Porsche says.

The RWD Macan will also have a 100kWh battery, 95kWh of which will be usable — same as the 4 and Turbo. It will also be the lightest model in the Macan lineup — 243 pounds lighter than the Macan 4, to be exact — which could help it get more range than the other versions. Porsche said it would disclose EPA-estimated ranges at a later date.

Image: Porsche

Meanwhile, the 4S will slot between the Macan 4 and Macan Turbo as a new higher-powered variant. With a rear-axle motor, it will have an output of 330kW (442hp), including a short power overboost of up to 380kW (509hp). With Launch Control, the maximum torque on the 4S is 578 pound-feet. The Macan 4S can accelerate from zero to 60mph in 3.9 seconds and has a top track speed of 149mph.

Porsche said the Macan EV will start at $77,295, which includes a $1,995 delivery fee but excludes tax, title, and dealership charges. The Macan 4S will start at $86,895, including the delivery fee.

The news of the new variants comes as sales of Porsche’s only EV in the US, the Taycan, have cratered, falling 48 percent year over year in the second quarter. A refreshed Taycan with better range and improved performance metrics is expected to arrive later this year.

Read More 

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

I don’t know how people wear headphones in the summer heat. I’m strictly in earbuds mode when the temperatures climb this high. But no matter your preference, Amazon Prime Day is a great opportunity to upgrade your aging gear (and declining battery life) with the latest and greatest from Bose, Samsung, Sony, and plenty of other brands.
For Prime Day 2024, expect plenty of deals that’ll have you considering an impulse purchase. Many of our favorite earbud and headphone picks are on sale at some of their lowest prices yet during the two-day event.

Some products (like Apple’s AirPods and AirPods Max) are due for a refresh in the coming months, but there’s nothing wrong with picking up the current version — especially at some of these prices. You’ll want to check back often, as we’ll be adding the best deals as they come up.
Apple

Beats

Bose
If you want the absolute best noise cancellation in the game, Bose’s latest QuietComfort Ultra products should be your pick. They outperform all competitors when it comes to quieting the outside world, and both are significantly discounted for Prime Day 2024 at some of the lowest prices we’ve seen yet.

Samsung

Sony

Sony’s WH-1000XM4 headphones are down to $198 for Prime Day. You’re not missing out on much by choosing these instead of the newer 1000XM5. The M4 offer powerful noise cancellation, LDAC codec support, and more.
Read our Sony WH-1000XM4 review.

Amazon’s invite-only deal on the Sony WH-CH520 is a great opportunity to get in some early Prime Day practice. The tan model will be on sale for an all-time low of $35.99 ($44 off) on July 16th and 17th; however, you have to be a Prime member and request an invitation to purchase them. If selected, Amazon will email you details on how to complete your purchase, which is how invite-only deals will work throughout the event.
Other

Prime members can pick up a pair of the Echo Buds with Active Noise Cancellation with a wired charging case for $34.99 ($85 off) or a wireless charging case for $44.99 ($95 off). Amazon’s wireless earbuds feature hands-free Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri with noise cancellation and ambient passthrough. They also last up to five hours per charge or 15 hours with the included case. Sure, none of the features are going to measure up to some of the more premium options from Apple or Sony, but Amazon’s proprietary earbuds offer a lot of value for the price.

Read our Amazon Echo Buds with Active Noise Cancellation review.

Amazon’s entry-level Echo Buds are also on sale for Prime members at Amazon for an all-time low of $24.99 ($25 off). The wireless earbuds lack more premium features like noise cancellation and aren’t particularly attractive, but there aren’t many earbuds with seamless Alexa support, water resistance, and multipoint Bluetooth connectivity in this price range. They’ll last up to six hours per charge, too, or 20 hours with the included charging case.

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

I don’t know how people wear headphones in the summer heat. I’m strictly in earbuds mode when the temperatures climb this high. But no matter your preference, Amazon Prime Day is a great opportunity to upgrade your aging gear (and declining battery life) with the latest and greatest from Bose, Samsung, Sony, and plenty of other brands.

For Prime Day 2024, expect plenty of deals that’ll have you considering an impulse purchase. Many of our favorite earbud and headphone picks are on sale at some of their lowest prices yet during the two-day event.

Some products (like Apple’s AirPods and AirPods Max) are due for a refresh in the coming months, but there’s nothing wrong with picking up the current version — especially at some of these prices. You’ll want to check back often, as we’ll be adding the best deals as they come up.

Apple

Beats

Bose

If you want the absolute best noise cancellation in the game, Bose’s latest QuietComfort Ultra products should be your pick. They outperform all competitors when it comes to quieting the outside world, and both are significantly discounted for Prime Day 2024 at some of the lowest prices we’ve seen yet.

Samsung

Sony

Sony’s WH-1000XM4 headphones are down to $198 for Prime Day. You’re not missing out on much by choosing these instead of the newer 1000XM5. The M4 offer powerful noise cancellation, LDAC codec support, and more.

Read our Sony WH-1000XM4 review.

Amazon’s invite-only deal on the Sony WH-CH520 is a great opportunity to get in some early Prime Day practice. The tan model will be on sale for an all-time low of $35.99 ($44 off) on July 16th and 17th; however, you have to be a Prime member and request an invitation to purchase them. If selected, Amazon will email you details on how to complete your purchase, which is how invite-only deals will work throughout the event.

Other

Prime members can pick up a pair of the Echo Buds with Active Noise Cancellation with a wired charging case for $34.99 ($85 off) or a wireless charging case for $44.99 ($95 off). Amazon’s wireless earbuds feature hands-free Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri with noise cancellation and ambient passthrough. They also last up to five hours per charge or 15 hours with the included case. Sure, none of the features are going to measure up to some of the more premium options from Apple or Sony, but Amazon’s proprietary earbuds offer a lot of value for the price.

Read our Amazon Echo Buds with Active Noise Cancellation review.

Amazon’s entry-level Echo Buds are also on sale for Prime members at Amazon for an all-time low of $24.99 ($25 off). The wireless earbuds lack more premium features like noise cancellation and aren’t particularly attractive, but there aren’t many earbuds with seamless Alexa support, water resistance, and multipoint Bluetooth connectivity in this price range. They’ll last up to six hours per charge, too, or 20 hours with the included charging case.

Read More 

Image: Apple

For years, I’ve kept a pretty spare iOS homescreen. Two or three rows of icons on the top of the screen, sometimes arranged in such a way that the app icon colors complement each other, and three apps in the dock. Because of Apple’s resistance to letting its users muck with the homescreen’s look and feel, I haven’t been able to make things quite as simple as I would like.
I’ve looked at more customizable Android homescreens with jealousy. I’ve had an iPhone since the day the first one came out, and while Apple’s smartphones have since become wildly more powerful, capable, and larger, the company has forced me to organize my apps starting from the top of the screen for 17 years.
Sure, my homescreen usually looked nice. But I’ve wanted options to add more of my own flair to my homescreen that I see dozens of times a day — the types of tools Android users have had for a very long time — even if it meant I’d make my phone look worse. iOS 14’s widgets were a step in the right direction, and with some Siri Shortcuts wizardry, you could do a fair amount of theming.
But iOS 18, the dam is finally breaking loose: as part of the new software update, Apple gives users some tools to easily customize the app icons on their homescreen, no jailbreaking or Siri Shortcuts required. You’ll be able to make all of your apps the same general color with a tinting tool, and icons can get dimmer when you flip to dark mode. You can also — again, finally — put your app icons wherever you want, meaning you can make them easier to reach or arrange them so they better fit with your wallpaper.
How did I use these newfound powers? At long last, I could make my dream minimalist homescreen.

Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge
Yes, Google Sheets is that important to me.

I love it. It’s how I’ve wanted to design my iOS homescreen for years: a few apps within easy reach of my thumb with little else to clutter things up. Best of all, it only took a few minutes to put together.
Let me break it all down.
First, I immediately made my app icons gray and boring so they would match my gray and boring wallpaper. The gray tint makes apps harder to discern from one another, and that’s the point: I wanted to add some friction to my phone so that I don’t waste as much time on it.
Then, I moved my apps from the top of the screen to the bottom. This makes them more accessible when I need them on my iPhone 12 Mini. (I can see this being really useful with a Plus or Pro Max iPhone.) An unexpected benefit has been that any new apps I download are added to the top of the screen, where they stick out.
I’ve already gone on the record about how I try to have as few apps on my phone as possible. Any apps hanging out at the top of my screen are glaring reminders that I need to organize them into my homescreen, shove them into my App Library, or delete them from my phone. (Usually, it’s the latter.)
I also hid the labels on my apps so there’s basically no text on the screen. I wish I could remove the word “Search” from the button above the dock so there would be no words at all. Maybe we’ll get that by iOS 36.
I use grayscale, too
I’ve used iOS 18’s new Control Center features to make my phone more boring, too. You can now make a native toggle for the Color Filters accessibility setting, which I turn on to make everything on my phone grayscale. I’ve found this makes my phone less interesting, and I take the gray as a visual cue that I should be doing something else instead of using my phone. But when I want to see a photo of my kid in full color for just a second, I can press the toggle to turn the grayscale off.
Yes, the changes I’ve made are ugly and sometimes irritating. But they’re my choices, and I’m happy Apple has given me these tools at all. People put oddball stuff on the outside of their phones all the time, and with iOS 18, that chaos can bleed over to what’s on their homescreens. When the update comes out for everyone this fall, I’m expecting an explosion of delightful and wacky designs.
And if I get tired of my grayscale, minimalist iPhone? It’s easier than ever to make something new.

Image: Apple

For years, I’ve kept a pretty spare iOS homescreen. Two or three rows of icons on the top of the screen, sometimes arranged in such a way that the app icon colors complement each other, and three apps in the dock. Because of Apple’s resistance to letting its users muck with the homescreen’s look and feel, I haven’t been able to make things quite as simple as I would like.

I’ve looked at more customizable Android homescreens with jealousy. I’ve had an iPhone since the day the first one came out, and while Apple’s smartphones have since become wildly more powerful, capable, and larger, the company has forced me to organize my apps starting from the top of the screen for 17 years.

Sure, my homescreen usually looked nice. But I’ve wanted options to add more of my own flair to my homescreen that I see dozens of times a day — the types of tools Android users have had for a very long time — even if it meant I’d make my phone look worse. iOS 14’s widgets were a step in the right direction, and with some Siri Shortcuts wizardry, you could do a fair amount of theming.

But iOS 18, the dam is finally breaking loose: as part of the new software update, Apple gives users some tools to easily customize the app icons on their homescreen, no jailbreaking or Siri Shortcuts required. You’ll be able to make all of your apps the same general color with a tinting tool, and icons can get dimmer when you flip to dark mode. You can also — again, finally — put your app icons wherever you want, meaning you can make them easier to reach or arrange them so they better fit with your wallpaper.

How did I use these newfound powers? At long last, I could make my dream minimalist homescreen.

I love it. It’s how I’ve wanted to design my iOS homescreen for years: a few apps within easy reach of my thumb with little else to clutter things up. Best of all, it only took a few minutes to put together.

Let me break it all down.

First, I immediately made my app icons gray and boring so they would match my gray and boring wallpaper. The gray tint makes apps harder to discern from one another, and that’s the point: I wanted to add some friction to my phone so that I don’t waste as much time on it.

Then, I moved my apps from the top of the screen to the bottom. This makes them more accessible when I need them on my iPhone 12 Mini. (I can see this being really useful with a Plus or Pro Max iPhone.) An unexpected benefit has been that any new apps I download are added to the top of the screen, where they stick out.

I’ve already gone on the record about how I try to have as few apps on my phone as possible. Any apps hanging out at the top of my screen are glaring reminders that I need to organize them into my homescreen, shove them into my App Library, or delete them from my phone. (Usually, it’s the latter.)

I also hid the labels on my apps so there’s basically no text on the screen. I wish I could remove the word “Search” from the button above the dock so there would be no words at all. Maybe we’ll get that by iOS 36.

I’ve used iOS 18’s new Control Center features to make my phone more boring, too. You can now make a native toggle for the Color Filters accessibility setting, which I turn on to make everything on my phone grayscale. I’ve found this makes my phone less interesting, and I take the gray as a visual cue that I should be doing something else instead of using my phone. But when I want to see a photo of my kid in full color for just a second, I can press the toggle to turn the grayscale off.

Yes, the changes I’ve made are ugly and sometimes irritating. But they’re my choices, and I’m happy Apple has given me these tools at all. People put oddball stuff on the outside of their phones all the time, and with iOS 18, that chaos can bleed over to what’s on their homescreens. When the update comes out for everyone this fall, I’m expecting an explosion of delightful and wacky designs.

And if I get tired of my grayscale, minimalist iPhone? It’s easier than ever to make something new.

Read More 

The hackers say they accessed Disney’s internal systems via an employee’s compromised computer. | Image: The Verge

Over a terabyte of data supposedly obtained from Disney’s internal messaging channels has been leaked online by a self-proclaimed “hacktivist group,” including login credentials, code, images, and information about unreleased projects.
The anonymous group calling itself Nullbulge has claimed responsibility for the leak, alleging to have gained access to the company’s Slack messaging data via the compromised computer of a Disney employee. “Anything we could get our hands on, we downloaded and packaged up,” the group said on X, claiming to have obtained “1.1TiB of files and chat messages” from almost 10,000 corporate Disney Slack channels. Disney has since confirmed to The Wall Street Journal that it’s “investigating this matter.”
Nullbulge alluded to possessing the stolen data on July 12th, hours prior to leaking Disney’s Slack archive.

Tick tock tick tock…#Disneyhttps://t.co/saVx4lxOi6 pic.twitter.com/PYZBywYhb6— NullBulge (@NullBulgeGroup) July 12, 2024

The WSJ reports the files contain internal Disney conversations about software development, recruitment, website maintenance, and employee programs dating back to “at least 2019.” According to Eurogamer, details regarding upcoming gaming collaborations and unannounced video game sequels obtained via leaked files have also started emerging online.
Nullbulge says its goal is to protect artists’ rights and compensation, telling The WSJ it had targeted Disney “due to how it handles artist contracts, its approach to AI, and its pretty blatant disregard for the consumer.”
The perceived threat that generative AI poses to the livelihoods of creative professionals was one of the more notable concerns that motivated unionization efforts for Disney animators, and the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike. Disney has also been criticized for using generative AI to produce the credits on its Secret Invasion Disney Plus series, and has reportedly created a task force to examine how AI can be applied across its entertainment portfolio.

The hackers say they accessed Disney’s internal systems via an employee’s compromised computer. | Image: The Verge

Over a terabyte of data supposedly obtained from Disney’s internal messaging channels has been leaked online by a self-proclaimed “hacktivist group,” including login credentials, code, images, and information about unreleased projects.

The anonymous group calling itself Nullbulge has claimed responsibility for the leak, alleging to have gained access to the company’s Slack messaging data via the compromised computer of a Disney employee. “Anything we could get our hands on, we downloaded and packaged up,” the group said on X, claiming to have obtained “1.1TiB of files and chat messages” from almost 10,000 corporate Disney Slack channels. Disney has since confirmed to The Wall Street Journal that it’s “investigating this matter.”

Nullbulge alluded to possessing the stolen data on July 12th, hours prior to leaking Disney’s Slack archive.

The WSJ reports the files contain internal Disney conversations about software development, recruitment, website maintenance, and employee programs dating back to “at least 2019.” According to Eurogamer, details regarding upcoming gaming collaborations and unannounced video game sequels obtained via leaked files have also started emerging online.

Nullbulge says its goal is to protect artists’ rights and compensation, telling The WSJ it had targeted Disney “due to how it handles artist contracts, its approach to AI, and its pretty blatant disregard for the consumer.”

The perceived threat that generative AI poses to the livelihoods of creative professionals was one of the more notable concerns that motivated unionization efforts for Disney animators, and the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike. Disney has also been criticized for using generative AI to produce the credits on its Secret Invasion Disney Plus series, and has reportedly created a task force to examine how AI can be applied across its entertainment portfolio.

Read More 

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Uber rolled out a new update that lets users search average fares and wait times for planned trips in other cities. The company said it wants to give people who are planning trips or vacations more visibility into how much it will cost to book Uber rides when they get there.
The update will give people access to fare and wait time details in approximately 10,000 cities globally, Uber says. The change rolls out starting on Tuesday, July 16th.

To find these insights, you select the “destination” box in the “plan your trip” tab and scroll down to “search in a different city.” There, it will autofill some popular choices or allow you to type in your own destination.
With the Summer Olympics set to begin later this month, Uber used Paris as an example of the type of city in which people would be interested in gaining more insight about travel. After selecting Paris, you can book a virtual car trip from any two locations to see how long the ride will last, or you can request more information about average fares and wait times. You can also reserve a ride several days in advance.
Uber said it wanted to “take the guess work” out of travel, especially with millions of people expected to make the trip to Paris for the Olympics. The company is also offering a number of other perks in connection with the Olympics, including a partnership with Flying Blue, the loyalty program for Air France-KLM Group, and champagne tours and river cruises bookable through the Uber app.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Uber rolled out a new update that lets users search average fares and wait times for planned trips in other cities. The company said it wants to give people who are planning trips or vacations more visibility into how much it will cost to book Uber rides when they get there.

The update will give people access to fare and wait time details in approximately 10,000 cities globally, Uber says. The change rolls out starting on Tuesday, July 16th.

To find these insights, you select the “destination” box in the “plan your trip” tab and scroll down to “search in a different city.” There, it will autofill some popular choices or allow you to type in your own destination.

With the Summer Olympics set to begin later this month, Uber used Paris as an example of the type of city in which people would be interested in gaining more insight about travel. After selecting Paris, you can book a virtual car trip from any two locations to see how long the ride will last, or you can request more information about average fares and wait times. You can also reserve a ride several days in advance.

Uber said it wanted to “take the guess work” out of travel, especially with millions of people expected to make the trip to Paris for the Olympics. The company is also offering a number of other perks in connection with the Olympics, including a partnership with Flying Blue, the loyalty program for Air France-KLM Group, and champagne tours and river cruises bookable through the Uber app.

Read More 

Image: Elgato

Amazon Prime Day is just beginning, and Elgato is already dropping a sweet deal. Prime subscribers can get the limited-edition atomic purple version of Elgato’s Stream Deck MK. 2 for $124.99 ($35 off) at Amazon.

Normally, the standard Stream Deck MK. 2 comes in black or white and sells for $149.99 (or discounted as low as $109.99 during its biggest sales promos), so there is a bit of a premium on the limited-edition model and its aesthetics. But this is the first (and possibly only) time the atomic purple model has been discounted. Elgato only sells this variant on Amazon, and it claims the individually numbered run will no longer be available once it sells out. So you may want to consider jumping on this if you love the recent resurgence of transparent tech. I know I’m quite tempted myself.

The 15-key macro pad controls all kinds of functions across a Windows or Mac computer. It may have been initially designed to help Twitch streamers with quick access to complex OBS Studio controls while live, but it serves just as well to help control your everyday tasks like summoning selected apps or muting yourself on a Zoom call with one press.

What makes the Stream Deck special is its small LCD buttons, which you can program to do all kinds of functions — even ones linked to other devices in your smart home ecosystem. Think of it like a universal remote for your computer, and it’s at its most helpful when a single button press is faster and simpler than having to dig through a software menu with your mouse or remembering some cockamamie multikey shortcut on your keyboard.

Image: Elgato

Amazon Prime Day is just beginning, and Elgato is already dropping a sweet deal. Prime subscribers can get the limited-edition atomic purple version of Elgato’s Stream Deck MK. 2 for $124.99 ($35 off) at Amazon.

Normally, the standard Stream Deck MK. 2 comes in black or white and sells for $149.99 (or discounted as low as $109.99 during its biggest sales promos), so there is a bit of a premium on the limited-edition model and its aesthetics. But this is the first (and possibly only) time the atomic purple model has been discounted. Elgato only sells this variant on Amazon, and it claims the individually numbered run will no longer be available once it sells out. So you may want to consider jumping on this if you love the recent resurgence of transparent tech. I know I’m quite tempted myself.

The 15-key macro pad controls all kinds of functions across a Windows or Mac computer. It may have been initially designed to help Twitch streamers with quick access to complex OBS Studio controls while live, but it serves just as well to help control your everyday tasks like summoning selected apps or muting yourself on a Zoom call with one press.

What makes the Stream Deck special is its small LCD buttons, which you can program to do all kinds of functions — even ones linked to other devices in your smart home ecosystem. Think of it like a universal remote for your computer, and it’s at its most helpful when a single button press is faster and simpler than having to dig through a software menu with your mouse or remembering some cockamamie multikey shortcut on your keyboard.

Read More