Photo Illustration by William Joel / The Verge Bad news: flagship phones cost a small fortune these days. Good news: we can help you pick the right one and get the most for your money. Modern flagship smartphones are little engineering marvels. And they should be, since they start around $800 and can cost well over $1,000. They tend to last upwards of four or five years, so the high cost is a little easier to swallow, but it’s still a major purchase for most of us. To make sure you get the most for your investment, we’ve picked out the best of the best. The phones highlighted below may be pricey, but they deliver excellent daily performance and great…

Macworld As one of the riskiest and most delay-prone projects in Apple history approaches its culmination in a glitzy launch event, leaker Mark Gurman has named the 13 employees who have been most instrumental in midwifing the troubled mixed reality headset. It says something for the longwindedness of the project that one of the 13 no longer works for Apple, while a second is expected to retire shortly after it’s released. But all have reportedly left their mark on the device cautiously expected to be named Reality Pro. In the latest edition of his regular Power On newsletter, Gurman claims that thousands of staff members are currently working on the headset, including executives, marketers and–mentioned last, in what feels like…

Macworld A peculiar formatting bug is causing problems with text chains between iPhone and Android users, and no one seems quite sure who is to blame. Multiple reports in multiple threads on Reddit and elsewhere complain that the numbers of people using Android or Google Voice are showing up on iPhones with an extra + sign at the beginning. This leads to the iPhone becoming confused and thinking it must be an international number: if the first two digits of the area code were 44, for example, it would turn into the +44 international code for the U.K. when the iPhone applies its automatic number formatting. This Reddit user’s (U.S.) number has been misidentified as coming from Turkey because it…

Macworld A peculiar formatting bug is causing problems with text chains between iPhone and Android users, and no one seems quite sure who is to blame. Multiple reports in multiple threads on Reddit and elsewhere complain that the numbers of people using Android or Google Voice are showing up on iPhones with an extra + sign at the beginning. This leads to the iPhone becoming confused and thinking it must be an international number: if the first two digits of the area code were 44, for example, it would turn into the +44 international code for the U.K. when the iPhone applies its automatic number formatting. This Reddit user’s (U.S.) number has been misidentified as coming from Turkey because it…

Macworld Apple’s list of currently available content for Apple TV+ continues to grow, but there’s an even faster-growing list of projects in the works. Films, limited series, specials, and multi-season series, Apple’s got lots of irons in the fire for all of them. Some of these projects have been officially announced and acknowledged by Apple, but many have just been reported by the Hollywood press, which always has its ear to the ground about what actors, directors, and producers are getting involved with which projects. We’ve divided this list in two: Coming Soon is a list of shows for which Apple has given an official release date or release window, and Further Out compiles other announced and not-yet-officially-announced projects that…

The market value of Apple, the world’s most valuable company, has surpassed that of the entire Russell 2000 for two weeks, the longest stretch on record, according to Bloomberg data. The Russell 2000 Index is a small-cap U.S. stock market index that makes up the smallest 2,000 stocks in the Russell 3000 Index. It was started by the Frank Russell Company in 1984. The Russell 2000 is by far the most common benchmark for mutual funds that identify themselves as “small-cap” as opposed to the S&P 500 index which is used primarily for large cap stocks. The top stock by index weight in the S&P 500 is, of course, Apple with an index weighting around 7.28% (Microsoft is second at…