/ On The Vergecast: what’s adjacent for the biggest happening successful e-readers, Apple’s caller iPad Mini, a shakeup astatine Google, and more.
By David Pierce, editor-at-large and Vergecast co-host with implicit a decennary of acquisition covering user tech. Previously, astatine Protocol, The Wall Street Journal, and Wired.
Oct 18, 2024, 12:41 PM UTC
Amazon launched 4 caller Kindles this week, possibly the biggest azygous motorboat time successful the 17-year past of the company’s wildly palmy e-reader. One of them even comes successful color! It is precise overmuch not a coincidence that the motorboat happened astir a twelvemonth after Panos Panay joined the company. Panay, a longtime Microsoft enforcement who was for years successful complaint of each things Windows and Surface, is present starring the devices and services squad astatine Amazon. His large task is Alexa, and turning Amazon’s adjunct into the AI level of the future. That’s seemingly coming soon. Maybe. But first: e-readers.
On this occurrence of The Vergecast, Panay joins the amusement to speech astir however helium decided to articulation Amazon, wherefore radical emotion their Kindles truthful much, the Scribe’s caller note-taking features, that caller colour screen, and more. He besides weighs successful connected the ongoing inclination toward distraction-free gadgets, and possibly gives america a hint oregon 2 astir AI features to come.
But earlier we get to Panay, there’s tons of gadget quality to speech about. First, we people our predictions astir last week’s Tesla robotaxi event — cipher did precise well, but Nilay astir apt won. Then we speech astir Apple’s caller iPad Mini, the caller Sonos Arc Ultra soundbar, the very confusing caller coalition trying to support x86 chips alive, and Analogue’s upcoming and awesome-looking Nintendo 64 emulator. After each that, it’s Kindle time.
Finally, successful the lightning round, we speech astir the latest enforcement shakeup wrong of Google, wherever AI is progressively moving the company. We besides speech astir Trump’s relationships with Big Tech CEOs, and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s big, beauteous plans for the AI future — if lone helium tin rise the wealth to get there.
If you privation to cognize much astir everything we sermon successful this episode, present are immoderate links to get you started, opening with the week’s gadget news:
And connected the caller Kindles:
And successful the lightning round: