Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge Grubhub has agreed to pay $25 million to settle a Federal Trade Commission lawsuit that claimed the food delivery service misled customers and drivers while also damaging the reputation of restaurants. The proposed settlement will require Grubhub to make several changes to the platform, such as showing the total delivery cost when customers place an order. Along with advertising “highly inflated hourly pay rates for drivers,” the FTC’s initial complaint accused Grubhub of hiding “the true cost of its services” by adding delivery fees that raised the price of customers’ final orders. The agency claimed that starting around 2019, Grubhub began advertising lower delivery fees to attract more customers but then began tacking on a “service” fee that increased the cost of orders anyway. The FTC also alleged the company charged Grubhub Plus members for delivery despite advertising the subscription as having “free” or “$0” deliveries. The agency claimed Grubhub makes the plan easy to sign up for but difficult to cancel while also allegedly blocking the accounts of users with large gift card balances. Screenshot: FTC The FTC claimed Grubhub charged customers hidden fees, raising their total order price. Additionally, the FTC accused Grubhub of adding restaurants to the platform even if they never signed up to sell food on the service. “Grubhub has had as many as 325,000 unaffiliated restaurants on its platform — more than half of all of the available restaurants on Grubhub,” the FTC claims. As a result, many customers wound up having issues with their orders, resulting in bad feedback for unaffiliated restaurants. Grubhub is now required to show customers the full cost of delivery and can no longer add “junk fees” to orders. It’s also banned from listing unaffiliated restaurants on the platform, and can only make driver earnings claims “that it can back up with evidence and in writing.” Grubhub must also notify customers when they’re banned and offer a way to appeal the decision, as well as make it easier to cancel Grubhub Plus. “While we categorically deny the allegations made by the FTC, many of which are wrong, misleading or no longer applicable to our business, we believe settling this matter is in the best interest of Grubhub and allows us to move forward,” Grubhub spokesperson Najy Kamal said in a statement to The Verge. The company also responded to the settlement in a post on its website. Though Grubhub was initially ordered to pay $140 million, it is “partially suspended based on the company’s inability to pay the full amount.” The company's $25 million will go toward refunding affected customers, but the FTC says the full judgment will be due “immediately” if Grubhub “is found to have misrepresented its financial status.”

Look Around Look Around at how lucky we are to have Apple Maps right now. | Screenshot: The Verge Following the beta launch of Apple Maps on the web in July, Apple has now recently added Look Around street-level views for several cities to the site, 9to5Mac reports. You can activate Look Around as you would in the Apple Maps app on devices like the iPhone or iPad by selecting the binoculars icon on the bottom left of the map window. You can then click and drag on the map to see different first-person perspectives in many big cities. At launch, the Apple Maps web beta included basic functionality like searching for points of interest, seeing ratings, browsing area Guides, and getting directions. With Look Around, the web version inches closer to matching functionality with the Apple Maps app on iOS, iPadOS, and macOS — albeit without personalization features such as searching addresses from your contacts or saving locations to your Library. Personally, I use the Apple Maps app on my Mac more often than any other mapping software, and I often find Apple’s Look Around to be a smoother experience than Google’s Street View. However, I sometimes also have to switch to Google Maps anyway since Apple doesn’t support Look Around for my hometown of Baltimore, MD — even though I spotted an Apple Maps van in the city all the way back in 2017. You can see the full list of cities where you can use Look Around on Apple’s website.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge I opened the App Store today to find an emulator I’d read about, and a new prompt appeared under the search bar inviting me to “search the way you talk.” I hadn’t seen the prompt before on my iPhone 13 Pro Max, and quite frankly, I had missed the iOS 18.1 update note about it. As it describes, Apple's update in October added, “App Store search lets you use natural language to find what you’re looking for more easily.” It’s also not the only place Apple is adding natural language search with iOS 18, in addition to Photos, Music, and Apple TV. While some others had seen a splash screen in October, I’d only spotted the same simple search prompts as before. When I asked around at The Verge, several others hadn’t seen it before, although closing the app and relaunching it caused the message to appear in at least one case, and a few social media posts have popped up from other people noticing it for the first time. The prompt in the hint bubble suggested trying something like “Apps that help me work out,” so of course, I gave it a try. Screenshot: iOS App Store How well does it work? When I searched “emulators that feature multiple consoles,” the top result was the multi-console Delta app. Cool. “Apps that only emulate single consoles” gave me the PS Remote Play, PlayStation, and Xbox apps — less good, but it did follow those with Gamma, a PS1 emulator app. And when I asked for “Video games that can help me work out,” well... Screenshot: iOS App Store This isn’t exactly what I was looking for, but I certainly would never have found this otherwise. Overall, it seems like an improvement to me. Twerk Race 3D is not an app that would help me work out, but it does seem like the search engine worked in spirit. I never felt like the App Store’s search was helpful for anything besides finding an app I already knew the name of. Plus, searching with the usual one-or-two-word terms might not give me the same variety as switching up how I phrase a natural language prompt.

Apple recently released tvOS 18.2 to Apple TV users. Among the changes, the company added the long-awaited Snoopy screensavers and support for more aspect ratio formats, which is perfect for those who connect their set-top boxes to a home projector. However, there are even more features planned for Apple TV users in tvOS 18.3. With the first beta of this upcoming operating system update, expected to be released in late January, Apple will add robot vacuum support in the Home app. As of now, this feature is only highlighted on the tvOS 18.3 beta code. Still, since Apple said it would delay this feature for early next year, it makes sense that references for this functionality are already available in the beta ahead of the final release. Here's how Apple describes the robot vacuum support on the Home app: The Home app now supports the core functionality of robot vacuum cleaners, such as power control, cleaning mode, vacuum, mop, and charge status. They can also participate in automations and scenes, and respond to Siri requests. So you can add them to your cleaning routines — or tell Siri to do some spot cleaning in the living room. Besides that, Apple still needs to release more screensavers for Apple TV users. In addition to the Snoopy option already available, the company teased that a "TV and Movies" option would also be available with screensavers from Foundation and other star-studded Apple TV+ shows during the WWDC 2024 keynote. Unfortunately, MacRumors reports that Apple removed all references to upcoming screensavers, including the "TV and Movies" option and an unannounced "Soundscapes" option. At the moment, it's unclear if Apple scrapped the idea of new screensavers or if the company needs a little more time to work on them before adding them to tvOS. Lastly, the publication says Apple is adding a Digital Sales Notice on the Apple TV app, which will inform users about their purchased items: When you purchase access to this item, you can permanently download it to your iPhone, iPad, Mac, or PC. Once downloaded, you can access this without an internet connection, and Apple can't remove it from your device. If you purchase this from the Apple TV app on Apple TV, smart TVs, or other streaming devices, you can't download it on those devices, but you can easily download it on compatible devices. BGR will let you know once we learn more about future Apple TV features. Don't Miss: iOS 18.3: New features, release date, AI updates, more The post Apple TV users will get these new features early next year appeared first on BGR. Today's Top Deals Cyber Week deals: $510 MacBook Air, $170 AirPods Pro 2, $99 Bose speaker, 53% off Echo Show 5 bundles, more Cyber Week deals: $329 Apple Watch S10, $50 off Microsoft Office 2024, $374 PS5 Slim, Vitamix blenders, more Today’s deals: $279 iPad 10, 20% off gift cards, huge Sonos sale, ultimate DEWALT power tool set, more Best Apple Watch deals for December 2024

Image: The Verge Threads is about to begin testing the ability to schedule posts, according to Instagram’s Adam Mosseri. “Replies cannot be scheduled,” he added, explaining that “we want to balance giving people more control to plan their Threads posts while still encouraging real-time conversation.” Mosseri also makes sure to note that Instagram has been working on this feature “for months.” I’m choosing to take as a sign that the Instagram chief is fed up with the notion that Bluesky is the motivating factor behind every new improvement that comes to Threads. Last week, Threads introduced curated collections of people to follow, which drew comparisons to Bluesky’s starter packs. Yesterday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that Threads now has over 100 million daily active users, marking the first time that the company has revealed a DAU figure for its Twitter / X competitor. Threads also has more than 300 million monthly active users. No matter how Meta is calculating those figures, Bluesky objectively remains far smaller. Instagram has long offered the option to schedule feed posts, and this week it announced the same convenience is being extended to DMs.