Developer conference season is finally over. We know what Facebook, Microsoft, Google, and Apple are plotting over the next year (spoiler alert: it’s AI). Apple’s WWDC, as usual, was both the last and the most news-packed of the bunch. Mike, Arielle, and David have been covering the show all week, and dig into a few of the biggest announcements. Can HomePod beat Alexa? How much money can you steal with Apple Pay? Will you finally ditch your laptop and go all in on iPad?

Some notes: Everything Apple announced at WWDC. How the new iMac Pro is a love letter to creatives. The HomePod looks great, but doesn’t think different. Recommendations this week: Spotify’s Daily Mix, Long Strange Trip, and War Machine.

Send the hosts feedback on their personal Twitter feeds. Arielle Pardes is @pardesoteric, David Pierce is @pierce and Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab.

Is there anything your phone can’t do these days? Google’s big I/O developer bash earlier this month left David and Michael thinking hard about the major role smartphone-based AI will soon play in our lives. Talk to your phone, show it pictures, type into it. AI takes it from there.

Some notes: Everything Google announced at I/O. David on Google Lens. Cade Metz on all the little things AI will soon bring to your phone. Google Assistant comes to iOS. Liz Stinson on those Gmail smart replies. Cade interviews Google CEO Sundar Pichai about the company’s cloud-based TPU platform. Recommendations this week are lists in Google Maps and the Africa Notes newsletter.

Send the hosts feedback on their personal Twitter feeds. David Pierce is @pierce and Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab.

Microsoft’s giant Build developer conference took place this week, and David was there. He gives us the rundown on all the news: Microsoft’s cloud initiatives, its mixed-reality hardware, the state of its AI, and the plan to put Microsoft apps on all your devices. Also, Michael has some predictions about the seemingly inevitable Surface Phone. Lastly, the duo has lots of feels about Amazon’s new Echo Show, an Alexa device with a screen destined for your kitchen counter.

Some notes: Microsoft’s vision for Cortana on your phone. The new AI-powered features coming to Windows 10 this fall. Those new VR motion controllers. The Echo Show from Amazon. Recommendations this week: The Handmaid’s Tale and Stoner.

Send the hosts feedback on their personal Twitter feeds. David Pierce is @pierce and Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab.

Compared to the rest of the personal technology industry, products made for women’s health have been stuck in the dark ages. Now, a wave of smartly designed breast pumps are hitting the market. There are also new, forward-thinking products for menstruation and fertility tracking. What took so long? The list of reasons is very long. Arielle Pardes joins the show this week to discuss all of these (very welcome!) developments.

Some notes: Arielle’s feature story on breast pumps. Adrienne So on fertility tracking. Sarah Zhang on the design of tampons. Recommendations this week: The Complete Stories of JG Ballard, and the James Baldwin documentary I Am Not Your Negro.

Send the hosts feedback on their personal Twitter feeds. Arielle Pardes is @pardesoteric, David Pierce is @pierce, and Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab.

In the past week, we technology fans have been treated to three big developments in the world of flying cars. Uber gave us an update on Elevate, its plan to have fleets of semi-autonomous flying people carriers by 2020; the German company Lilium showed off its design for a passenger vehicle capable of vertical take-off and landing; and the Larry Page-funded startup Kitty Hawk showed off its riding-mower drone of a personal flyer. Super weird week! Alex Davies, the editor of WIRED’s transportation section, joins Mike this week to talk through the news.

Some links: Uber Elevate news from this week. The original whitepaper release in October, 2016. Lilium’s Jet, which is not a jet. The New York Times went deep on the Kitty Hawk vehicle. Recommendations this week: the Myths and Legends podcast and Zinn and the Art of Road Bike Maintenance.

Send the hosts feedback on their personal Twitter feeds. Alex Davies is @adavies47, David Pierce is @pierce, and Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab.

Facebook showed off some nutty new tech this week at its annual developer conference, including social VR experiences, skin-based interfaces, and augmented reality markup for the real world. Some of these ideas are here already, and some are years away. Taken together, they show that Facebook is thinking about ways to squeeze its software into more parts of your life—for better and for worse. Michael and David are joined this week by WIRED writer and editor Cade Metz, who attended F8. The team discusses the pitfalls of the AR tech, the likelihood of AI making an impact anytime soon, and why we all keep getting played by Facebook’s marketing department.

Some links: See all of our F8 coverage. David wrote about Messenger becoming Facebook’s “everything app.” Cade wrote about the pitfalls of AR. Brian Barrett wrote about how we’ll navigate a world viewed exclusively through our phones. Recommendations this week: TripCase, V-Moda Crossfade 2 Wireless headphones, the documentary on AlphaGo. Also, be sure to revisit Cade’s series (and magazine cover story) about Google’s Go-playing AI.

Send the hosts feedback on their personal Twitter feeds. Cade “Chad” Metz is @cademetz, David Pierce is @pierce, and Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab.

Big News this week: we welcome our new co-host, Arielle Pardes. She gives us some tips on managing iMessages across all your devices—advice Alabama’s former governor should maaaybe follow. In the first half of the show, David profiled 18-year-old hip-hop producer Steve Lacy. He makes all of his music on his iPhone, from the initial beats to the instruments to the vocals. Lacy is a member of the band The Internet, he’s won a Grammy, and now a song he co-wrote made its way onto Kendrick Lamar’s just-released LP, Damn. David got to watch Lacy work, so he walks us through the process.

Some links: Steve Lacy profiled, along with an amazing video. Arielle’s tips for managing iMessage’s behavior. David on why iMessage makes sense on Android. Recommendations this week: Rothy’s, YubiKey, and YouTube TV.

Send the hosts feedback on their personal Twitter feeds. Arielle Pardes is @pardesoteric, David Pierce is @pierce, and Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab.

Reports surfaced this week offering more details about Microsoft’s upcoming Project Scorpio platform. This new architecture that’ll end up in 2017 Xboxen is likely powerful enough to display 4K games and power a VR headset—capabilities that will help Microsoft gain back some ground in the console wars that Sony has captured with last year’s PSVR. The hosts discuss XBox, PlayStation, HoloLens, Oculus, and where Microsoft can take things from here. In the second half of the show, Paul Sarconi returns to tell us about his time spent with NextVR, the team producing 360-video basketball broadcasts for Gear VR and Daydream.

Some links: Two previous reports on Project Scorpio. The Verge story about the Xbox of the future. Every Hank Scorpio scene from The Simpsons. Jessi Hempel goes hands-on with the HoloLens for WIRED. Read all our virtual reality coverage. Recommendations this week: The CoffeeSock, Midori MD notebooks, and the Retro from Slickwraps.

Send the hosts feedback on their personal Twitter feeds. David Pierce is @pierce and Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab.

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WIRED’s 2017 Predictions: VR Is Coming to an Arcade Near You

It’s unlikely that you’ll buy a VR rig in 2017, instead you’ll go ‘VRing’ by buying a ticket to a virtual gaming theme park or experience.

Samsung’s latest Galaxy devices, the S8 and the S8+, were unveiled this week. They represent a turning point for Samsung, as the Korean giant hopes to put the whole exploding Note 7 debacle well behind it. The path forward is through these new phones, which come with bespoke software and a voice assistant called Bixby. The hosts discuss the new developments. Also, there’s a new-not-new iPad to talk about, and David starts the show by recounting his experiences as a smartwatch enthusiast at Baselworld, the watch industry gathering in Switzerland. In the middle of the show, Paul Sarconi brings us another installment of Brief Histories of Important Gadgets. This week: the Tablet PC.

Some links: The Samsung Galaxy phones. More about Bixby. Logitech’s Rugged Combo iPad keyboard case. Baselworld awkwardly surfs the smartwatch wave. A new iPhone is red. Recommendations this week: The Dinner Party Download and Switched on Pop.

Send the hosts feedback on their personal Twitter feeds. David Pierce is @pierce and Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab.

The first scene in “Cities,” the final episode of Planet Earth II, looks like a chase scene out of a James Bond movie. But instead of Daniel Craig, you’ve got a bunch of fighting langurs battling high above the city of Jodhpur, India. The music thumps, the camera soars, and if you watch on a big enough screen, it feels like you’re leaping from rooftops alongside them.

“Cities” represents a new sort of endeavor for the Planet Earth team. Their latest study of animals looks at how cities change and shape animals, how animals survive (or don’t) in urban environments, and how humans can improve the relationship. It’s thrilling and touching, and features a surprising amount of turtle gore. We continue our ongoing coverage of this wonderful series, we talk to Fredi Devas, who directed and produced the finale, about the experience of exploring these newest of habitats.

You can watch Planet Earth II on BBC America each Saturday at 9 pm. You can even watch the premiere free on BBC America’s website. We love it, so check out our Planet Earth II coverage, and be sure to come back for discussions of other episodes. We still have lots of questions. If you do too, send the hosts feedback on their personal Twitter feeds (David Pierce is @pierce, and Michael Calore is @snackfight) or bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab.