Thanksgiving is behind us, which means the holiday shopping season has officially begun. And that means that both companies and third-party retailers will spend every day between now and Christmas morning trying to get you to spend your consumer dollars with them.
As in years past, one of the most sought-after gifts will be the smartphone. According to an analysis last month by global marketing research firm NielsenIQ, 37% of shoppers buying tech this season have smartphones on their list. And when it comes to smartphone brands, Apple tops tech buyer preferences, with 54% of those surveyed looking to buy an iPhone.
But as anyone who knows Apple well knows, the company rarely offers sales on its iconic smartphoneeven during the holidays. Yet that doesnt mean iPhone deals cant be had this festive season. You just need to know where to look. Here are three shopping hacks you can use to find the best deals on iPhones this holiday season.
Use price tracking websites to keep tabs on iPhone sales
Theres no shortage of places to buy an iPhone. Besides purchasing one directly from Apple, you can pick one up at nearly anywhere where electronics are sold, including Amazon, Best Buy, Target, Walmart, carrier stores like AT&T and Verizon, eBay, and more.
Yet manually checking to see if any of these third-party resellers offer iPhone deals during the holidays (which they often do) can be time-consuming. But thats where price tracking websites come in. They let you quickly check whether an iPhone is on sale and often provide the direct link to buy it before the sale price disappears.
There are numerous price tracking websites and apps you can use to find the best sales on an iPhone. These include sites like CamelCamelCamel, which tracks the prices of products available on Amazon. Just type in the iPhone model you are looking for in CamelCamelCamels search bar, and youll see Amazons current price of the model, along with new and used prices from third-party resellers on the site. You can also add your desired iPhone to a price watch list, and CamelCamelCamel will notify you as soon as it detects a sale.
There are also plenty of tech sites that offer dedicated price trackers for Apple products, including iPhones. Some of the better ones include AppleInsiders iPhone Price Guide and 9to5Toys’ Apple tracker. The advantage of checking these sites is that they tend to show iPhone deals from across the web, not just on Amazon. MacPrices.net also keeps a good running list of iPhone deals.
Use Google Chromes Shopping Insights and price tracking
Yes, its somewhat ironic that Apple’s competitor, Google, can help you find a good deal on the iPhone. But it can.
Google’s Chrome browser offers a feature called Shopping Insights that lets you view the price of a product over time, track its price, and receive notifications when the price drops. The tool is great for those looking for a deal on an iPhone (or any other product) but don’t want to check dedicated price-tracking websites multiple times a day.
Shopping Insights is built into Chrome on PC, Mac, Android, and iOS and is simple to use. Just go to a retailers website and look up the iPhone you want to buy. In Chromes URL bar, youll see a shopping bag icon. Tap it to get shipping insights for your desired iPhone, click Save and Track Price, then turn on price notifications to be alerted when the iPhone you want goes on sale. (Full details about how to use Chromes Shopping Insights and price tracking tools can be found here.)
Use ChatGPT to find the best holiday deals on iPhone
The holidays are a busy time, so maybe you dont want to spend your time browsing price tracking websites or clicking around in Chrome to find iPhone deals. In that case, this final shopping hack to help you find a deal on an iPhone is probably for you: Just ask ChatGPT.
Given that you can use ChatGPT to find deals on flights, it should be no surprise that you can also use OpenAIs chatbot to assist you in finding the best holiday shopping deals for an iPhone.
I asked ChatGPT where I could buy an iPhone 16 with at least 256 GB of storage for the best deal right now, and the chatbot instantly returned a list of results showing a range of prices for the model, both new and used, along with direct links to where I could buy them. It was by far the easiest and fastest way to find iPhone deals out of all the methods above.
Three years ago, if someone needed to fix a leaky faucet or understand inflation, they usually did one of three things: typed the question into Google, searched YouTube for a how-to video or shouted desperately at Alexa for help.
Today, millions of people start with a different approach: They open ChatGPT and just ask.
Im a professor and director of research impact and AI strategy at Mississippi State University Libraries. As a scholar who studies information retrieval, I see that this shift of the tool people reach for first for finding information is at the heart of how ChatGPT has changed everyday technology use.
Change in searching
The biggest change isnt that other tools have vanished. Its that ChatGPT has become the new front door to information. Within months of its introduction on Nov. 30, 2022, ChatGPT had 100 million weekly users. By late 2025, that figure had grown to 800 million. That makes it one of the most widely used consumer technologies on the planet.
Surveys show that this use isnt just curiosityit reflects a real change in behavior. A 2025 Pew Research Center study found that 34% of U.S. adults have used ChatGPT, roughly double the share found in 2023. Among adults under 30, a clear majority (58%) have tried it. An AP-NORC poll reports that about 60% of U.S. adults who use AI say they use it to search for information, making this the most common AI use case. The number rises to 74% for the under-30 crowd.
Traditional search engines are still the backbone of the online information ecosystem, but the kind of searching people do has shifted in measurable ways since ChatGPT entered the scene. People are changing which tool they reach for first.
For years, Google was the default for everything from how to reset my router to explain the debt ceiling. These basic informational queries made up a huge portion of search traffic. But these quick, clarifying, everyday what does this mean questions are the ones ChatGPT now answers faster and more cleanly than a page of links.
And people have noticed. A 2025 U.S. consumer survey found that 55% of respondents now use OpenAIs ChatGPT or Googles Gemini AI chatbots about tasks they previously would have asked Google search to help them with, with even higher usage figures for the U.K. Another analysis of more than 1 billion search sessions found that traffic from generative AI platforms is growing 165 times faster than traditional searches, and about 13 million U.S. adults have already made generative AI their go-to tool for online discovery.
This doesnt mean people have stopped Googling, but it means ChatGPT has peeled off the kinds of questions for which users want a direct explanation instead of a list of links. Curious about a policy update? Need a definition? Want a polite way to respond to an uncomfortable email? ChatGPT is faster, feels more conversational and feels more definitive.
At the same time, Google isnt standing still. Its search results look different than they did three years ago because Google started weaving its AI system Gemini directly into the top of the page. The AI Overview summaries that appear above traditional search links now instantly answer many simple questionssometimes accurately, sometimes less so.
But either way, many people never scroll past that AI-generated snapshot. This fact combined with the impact of ChatGPT are the reasons the number of zero-click searches has surged. One report using Similarweb data found that traffic from Google to news sites fell from over 2.3 billion visits in mid-2024 to under 1.7 billion in May 2025, while the share of news-related searches ending in zero clicks jumped from 56% to 69% in one year.
Google search excels at pointing to a wide range of sources and perspectives, but the results can feel cluttered and designed more for clicks than clarity. ChatGPT, by contrast, delivers a more focused and conversational response that prioritizes explanation over ranking. The ChatGPT response can lack the source transparency and multiple viewpoints often found in a Google search.
In terms of accuracy, both tools can occasionally get it wrong. Googles strength lies in letting users cross-check multiple sources, while ChatGPTs accuracy depends heavily on the quality of the prompt and the users ability to recognize when a response should be verified elsewhere.
OpenAI is aiming to make it even more appealing to turn to ChatPGT first for search by trying to get people to use a browser with ChatGPT built in.
Smart speakers and YouTube
The impact of ChatGPT has reverberated beyond search engines. Voice assistants, such as Alexa speakers and Google Home, continue to report high ownership, but that number is down slightly. One 2025 summary of voice-search statistics estimates that about 34% of people ages 12 and up own a smart speaker, down from 35% in 2023. This is not a dramatic decline, but the lack of growth may indicate a shift of more complex queries to ChatGPT or similar tools. When people want a detailed explanation, a step-by-step plan or help drafting something, a voice assistant that answers in a short sentence suddenly feels limited.
By contrast, YouTube remains a giant. As of 2024, it had approximately 2.74 billion users, with that number increasing steadily since 2010. Among U.S. teens, about 90% say they use YouTube, making it the most widely used platform in that age group. But what kind of videos people are looking for is changing.
People now tend to start with ChatGPT and then move to YouTube if they need the additional information a how-to video conveys. For many everyday tasks, such as explain my health benefits or help me write a complaint email, people ask ChatGPT for a summary, script or checklist. They head to YouTube only if they need to seea physical process.
You can see a similar pattern in more specialized spaces. Software engineers, for instance, have long relied on sites such as Stack Overflow for tips and pieces of software code. But question volume there began dropping sharply after ChatGPTs release, and one analysis suggests overall traffic fell by about 50% between 2022 and 2024. When a chatbot can generate a code snippet and an explanation on demand, fewer people bother typing a question into a public forum.
So where does that leave us?
Three years in, ChatGPT hasnt replaced the rest of the tech stack; its reordered it. The default search has shifted. Search engines are still for deep dives and complex comparisons. YouTube is still for seeing real people do real things. Smart speakers are still for hands-free convenience.
But when people need to figure something out, many now start with a chat conversation, not a search box. Thats the real ChatGPT effect: It didnt just add another app to our phonesit quietly changed how we look things up in the first place.
Deborah Lee is a professor and director of research impact and AI strategy at Mississippi State University.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Theres an old myth that Inuit cultures have as many as a hundred words for snow. I remember learning about it in school, and there was just something wonderful about the idea that peoples perceptions can be so deeply rich and different. I guess thats why, although it has been debunked many times, the story keeps getting repeated.
There is also a lot of truth to the underlying concept. As anybody who has ever learned another language or lived in a different culture knows, peoples perceptions vary widely. In The WEIRDest People In The World, Harvards Joseph Henrich documents how important and interesting these differences can be.
So if the Inuit snow myth highlights an important concept, many would argue that theres no real harm in repeating it, in much the same way we continue to tell the apocryphal story of George Washington cutting down his fathers cherry tree. Yet truth matters. Once we start degrading it, we lose our ability to understand what is often a messy and nuanced world.
What do you call a square?
What makes the Inuit snow myth compelling is that it so viscerally illustrates how language can reveal deeper truths. For example, in German the word for square is Platz and in neighboring Poland, it is Plac, a word that is pronounced very similarly. In Russian, the word is Ploshchad, so again, you can see the family resemblance.
In Ukraine, however, which is geographically and linguistically in the middle of all those countries, the word for square is completely different. It is Maidan and comes from Turkish, which gives you hints about Ukraines history with the Crimean Khanate, its historical ties to Byzantium, and lots of other interesting things.
Slavic languages are filled with these fascinating historical remnants. The word slav comes from the same root as word (slov). So Slavs considered themselves people of the word. The word for German in slavic languages is Niemiec, which roughly translates to doesnt speak, and shows how the Slavs considered the Germanic tribes Barbarians.
Languages, of course, continue to evolve. Since the early 1990s, the Independence Square in the center of Kyiv, the Maidan Nezalezhnosti, has been the place where people go to protest, especially during the Orange Revolution in 2004 and the Revolution of Dignity in 2014. So today, when Ukrainians say that its time to go to the Maidan, they mean its time to revolt.
The Inuit snow myth alerts us to the possibility of examining languages in this way and many would argue that we shouldn’t let the truth get in the way of a good story. Still, once we abandon truth, we start down a troubled path.
The myths of Blockbuster, Kodak, and Xerox PARC
We tell stories because specific narratives can often point to more general principles. For example, when pundits want to show the dangers of complacent corporate giants getting caught sleeping, they often point to Blockbuster, Kodak, and Xerox. Yet, much like the Inuit snow myth, these stories arent really true. Lets look at each one in turn.
Blockbuster is supposedly a cautionary tale because it ignored Netflix until it was too late. Yet as Gina Keating, who covered the story for years at Reuters, explains in her book Netflixed, the video giant moved relatively quickly and came up with a successful strategy. The real problem was that those changes tanked the stock price and the strategy was reversed when CEO John Antioco left after a compensation dispute with investor Carl Icahn.
In a similar vein, were often told that, after inventing digital photography, Kodak ignored the market. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, its EasyShare line of cameras were top sellers. It also made big investments in quality printing for digital photos. The problem was that it made most of its money on developing film, a business that completely disappeared.
Another popular fable is that Xerox failed to commercialize the technology developed at its Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), when in fact the laser printer developed there saved the company. What also conveniently gets left out is that Steve Jobs was able to get access to the companys technology to build the Macintosh because Xerox had invested in Apple and then profited handsomely from that investment.
I recently got the chance to discuss each of these with Paul Nunes, who for years headed up thought leadership at Accenture, on Aidan McCullins Innovation Show and what we noticed was that, in each case, the pundit version would lead you exactly the wrong way. Blockbusters problem wasnt that they ignored external threats, but failed to account for internal resistance. Digital photography would never have replaced Kodaks film developing business and Xerox PARC is actually a success story that other firms would do well to emulate.
Feynmans Law
History is full of brave souls who defied the status quo. In the 1840s, Ignaz Semmelweis pioneered handwashing in hospitals, only to be rebuked by the medical establishment. In the early 20th century, William Coley pioneered cancer immunotherapy, only to be ignored. Barry Marshall was pilloried for his work that showed peptic ulcers were caused not by stress, but by the bacterium H. pylori.
Yet being contrarian doesnt make you right. During Soviet times, Trofim Lysenko’s pseudoscientific agricultural theories led to crop failures and contributed to famines that killed millions. More recently, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.s vaccine skepticism has coincided with a resurgence of measles.
So how do we engage in healthy skepticism of the zeitgeist without descending into quackery?
The physicist Richard Feynman, one of the greatest minds of the 20th century, offers helpful guidance. He said that science begins with a guess. Thats not only allowable, but necessary. To discover something new, you need to let your mind roam free. Impossible, even ridiculous ideas, are how we break new ground.
Yet the second step is crucial: you have to test your ideas. Or, as Feynman put it, If it disagrees with experiment, its wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It doesnt make any difference how beautiful your guess is, it doesnt matter how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is If it disagrees with experiment, its wrong. Thats all there is to it.
The Narrative Fallacy
The neuroscientist Antonio Damasio believes we encode experiences in our bodies as somatic markers and that our emotions often alert us to things that our brains arent aware of. Another researcher, Joseph Ledoux, reached similar conclusions. He pointed out that our body reacts much faster than our mind, such as when we jump out of the way of an oncoming object and only seconds later realize what happened.
Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman suggests that we have two modes of thinking. The first is emotive, intuitive, and fast. The second is rational, deliberative, and slow. Our bodies evolved to make decisions quickly in life-or-death situations. Our rational minds came much later and dont automatically engage. It takes conscious effort to activate the second system.
The problem is that when something feels right, humans have a tendency to build stories around them. False fables like those about Blockbuster, Kodak, and Xerox, purport to teach us important lessons, but the truth is that they rob us of the opportunity to unlock deeper insights.
Thats why Ive learned to be suspicious of good stories, especially those that I want to be true because they just feel right. We need to constantly interrogate our feelings, especially in areas for which we do not have specific training or relevant expertise. We need to understand what exactly our emotions are alerting us to, and that requires us to engage our rational mind.
Thats why, sometimes, you need to let the truth get in the way of a good story.
A growing number of Amazon employees have signed onto an open letter issuing some dire warnings about the companys sprint toward AI.
The letter, signed by more than 1,000 workers and published this week, calls out Amazon for pushing its AI investments at the expense of the climate and its human workforce. The letters supporters come from a wide array of roles at the company, including many software engineers, and even employees focused on building AI systems.
We believe that the all-costs-justified, warp-speed approach to AI development will do staggering damage to democracy, to our jobs, and to the earth, the letters authors wrote. Were the workers who develop, train, and use AI, so we have a responsibility to intervene.
In the letter obtained by The Guardian, the Amazon employees argue that their employer is throwing out its climate promises in the scramble to win the AI race. Amazon has pledged to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2040, pointing to efficiencies from electric delivery vehicles and reduced plastic packaging in its climate commitment.
In spite of its stated promise to reduce its carbon footprint, Amazons carbon emissions rose last year, a trend tied to pollution from its ubiquitous fleet of delivery vehicles and its major push into data center construction.Resource intensive data centers like the ones Amazon is pouring billions into building out are a hot topic in 2025. The buildings, built to power tech giants AI ambitions, pump in loads of electricity to keep servers humming and suck up water to cool off all of that energy use.
Data centers, usually placed well beyond urban hubs, promise rural communities a boom of steady local jobs for many of the worlds most valuable companies, but the reality is often less inspiring. In spite of their massive footprint and a short term burst of work during construction, very few people are actually necessary to keep things up and running. In light of the downsides, rural communities around the country are beginning to reject big techs big AI buildout.
AI at all costs
Climate isnt the only concern among the Amazon workers who signed onto the open letter. The group of anonymous employees accuses the company of forcing AI on its workforce while openly plotting to get rid of human workers as soon as technologically possible. In the meantime, the letters authors say that timelines are getting shorter and output demands are on the rise as the company tries to squeeze every last drop of productivity out of its employees.
Last month, Amazon announced that it would lay off 14,000 employees, a massive round of cuts focused on its corporate workforce. In a memo to employees, Amazons Senior Vice President of People Experience and Technology Beth Galetti said that the cuts were aimed at reducing bureaucracy, removing layers, and shifting resources to ensure were investing in our biggest bets namely the companys enormous spending on AI.
The world is changing quickly, Galetti wrote. This generation of AI is the most transformative technology weve seen since the Internet, and its enabling companies to innovate much faster than ever before (in existing market segments and altogether new ones). Amazons AI spending this year has topped $125 billion and the company plans to invest that much and more into artificial intelligence in 2026.
A call for guardrails
The letter also points to Amazons major lobbying push against AI regulation and its role in spreading surveillance and military technology as major areas of concern. To address the worries it raises, the letter calls on Amazon to abandon dirty energy in order to recommit to its climate goals, loop non-manager employee voices into AI decision making and reject surveillance and deportation applications of its technology.
The letter only represents a tiny sliver of Amazons more than 1.55 million employees, but that hasnt deterred a thousand people at the company from voicing their concerns, and potentially risking their jobs. Beyond Amazons own workforce, around 2,400 people including students and workers at other major tech companies issued their own letter of support.
All of this is daunting, but none of it is inevitable, the Amazon letters authors wrote. A better future is still very much within reach, but it requires us to get real about the costs of AI and the guardrails we need.
In the latest sign that the Trump administration isnt so concerned about asbestos, the Food and Drug Administration this week withdrew a proposed rule that would have required testing for the toxic asbestos in talc-based cosmetics.
The rule, which was proposed by the Biden administration less than a year ago, would have required manufacturers to test cosmetics for asbestos and keep records demonstrating compliance. Exposure to asbestos has been linked to lung cancer, mesothelioma, ovarian cancer, and laryngeal cancer, which is why various health agencies have determined theres no safe level of exposure to this natural mineral.
Johnson & Johnson has been the subject of numerous lawsuits related to reports that the company knew about the risk of asbestos in the talc found in its baby powder. Talc is found in many cosmetics because it can be used to absorb moisture, prevent caking, and create a silky feel for these products, according to information on the FDA website.
But the current administration seems to have yielded partly to the highly scientific and technical issues addressed in the 49 comments received during the mandatory public comment period, according to a legal notice posted to the federal registry and signed by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Good cause exists to withdraw the proposed rule at this time, the order stated. We are withdrawing the proposed rule to reconsider best means of addressing the issues covered by the proposed rule and broader principles to reduce exposure to asbestos, and to ensure that any standardized testing method requirements for detecting asbestos in talc-containing cosmetic products help protect users of talc-containing cosmetic products from harmful exposure to asbestos.
The FDA didnt immediately respond to a request for comment from Fast Company.
WITHDRAWING FROM BIDENS BANS
Withdrawing from this proposed rule doesnt necessarily mean that manufacturers will suddenly start adding asbestos to cosmetics, but rather a guardrail for ensuring the deadly toxin isnt present in these products is now being reconsidered. The FDA plans to issue a proposed rule related to the Modernization of Cosmetics Regulation Act of 2022.
A spokesperson for the agency confirmed as much to The New York Times, saying that the FDA will submit a new proposed rule that offers a more comprehensive approach to reducing exposure to asbestos and reducing asbestos related illness, including identifying safer additives as alternatives, especially when they are less costly.
But both Trump administrations have demonstrated some willingness to walk back protections from this deadly carcinogen, allowing asbestos to make a comeback. By contrast, the Biden administration finalized a ban on ongoing uses of chrysotile asbestos in 2024 and also proposed the aforementioned rule for detecting and identifying asbestos in cosmetics.
The current Trump administration has now taken a swipe at both of these efforts to ban asbestos. In June, the Environmental Protection Agency in June planned to withdraw a proposed ban on chrysotile asbestos, before reversing course less than one month later.
OUTRAGE AT ROLLBACK
The U.S. continues to be out-of-step with much of the rest of the world, where asbestos is completely outlawed in more than 50 countries. Notably, asbestos is not outlawed in China, where many cosmetics are manufactured.
This latest move by the FDA is both baffling and troubling to some consumer advocates.
Nothing could make America less healthy than having a cancer causing product in cosmetics, Scott Faber, vice president of government affairs with the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit thats lobbied for stricter regulations around talc, told The Guardian. Its hard to understand why we would revoke a rule that simply requires companies to test for asbestos.
And it marks another horrific rollback that should outrage consumers, Linda Reinstein, president and chief executive of the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization, told The New York Times.
It puts the onus on Americans to have to try to identify consumer products that might be contaminated, and the average person cant do that because you cant know without testing, she said.
No one can deny that the internet, especially social media, can pose significant dangers. Now, a new survey has found that about one in five parents and carers knowand have supporteda child who has experienced online blackmail.
The survey, from the U.K.s National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC), also showed that one in ten of these individuals own children have experienced blackmail online.
According to the NSPCC, bad actors often start communicating with young people on public platforms before actively moving the conversation to end-to-end encrypted messaging servicesmaking it more challenging for them to be tracked.
Only 43% of parents and carers found tech companies or platforms effective in preventing online blackmail, and just 37% thought the same of the government. These findings show the scale of online blackmail that is taking place across the country, yet tech companies continue to fall short in their duty to protect children, NSPCC policy manager Randi Govender said in response to the report.
Some participants blamed online platforms for failing to care about childrens welfare. As one said, They have no interest whatsoever. As long as they get their money from marketing, thats good enough for them. Another individual pointed to AIs role: I personally dont feel like they do enough to remove the damaging content fast enough and rely too heavily on AI rather than humans.
The NSPCC also pointed to the role of AI in online blackmail, with bad actors sometimes using generative AI to create compromising deepfakes of children using regular photos of them on social media.
Online blackmailing of young people is a global problem
While the survey was of 2,558 U.K. parents and carers, online blackmailing of children is also running rampant in the U.S. In 2024, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) reported 29.2 million separate child sexual exploitation incidents sent to its CyberTipline.
The FBI also reports an increase in financial sextortion cases, in which a blackmaileroften posting as a young personconvinces a child to send sexually explicit images and then demands the child send compensation or they will release the images. Oftentimes, they publish it whether theyve received a payment or not.
Instances of online blackmail can lead to young people attempting suicide.
The role of parents in preventing online blackmailing
The NSPCC survey highlights a shortfall in discussions between parents and children about online blackmail. About two in five parents and carers said theyve rarely or never talked about the subject with their children. They want and need more resources about online blackmailing, but also point to schools as another place children should learn about its dangers.
As we near the final weeks of the year, platforms of all stripes will soon begin rolling out their annual recap features, which let users see the content they have interacted with most.
While numerous tech giants release these recaps, music streamer Spotify is usually the most anticipated.
Known as Spotify Wrapped, this look-back lets you see which songs you interacted with most over the past 12 months.
So when will Spotify Wrapped 2025 be available? Heres what you need to know.
What is Spotify Wrapped 2025?
Spotify Wrapped is the music streamers annual year-in-review compilation that allows Spotify users to see which songs, albums, and artists they interacted with most throughout the year. The company also reveals the most-streamed songs, artists, and albums worldwide among all its users.
While the feature is ostensibly a year-end gift to users, Wrapped doubles as a massive free marketing campaign for the company. Millions of Spotify users frequently share their Wrapped results publicly on social media and privately in group chats and DMs.
This kind of online virality benefits Spotify since, by sharing their Wrapped results, users are essentially advertising the companys streaming service to their friends and followers.
Spotify Wrapped: Release Date History
Spotify has historically released its annual Wrapped compilation at the end of each year, but the exact date varies.
Spotify Wrapped has existed since 2016 (or 2015 if you count its first Year in Music recap), and Fast Company has covered the annual launch nearly every year since. In years past, these are the dates Spotify Wrapped launched:
2024: December 4
2023: November 29
2022: November 30
2021: December 1
2020: December 1
2019: December 5
2018: December 6
2017: December 13
2016: December 14
2015: December 6 (called Spotifys 2015 Year in Music)
Spotify Wrapped 2025 Release Date
As you can see from the dates above, the annual Spotify Wrapped compilation has been released as early as late November and as late as mid-December.
Fast Company has reached out to Spotify seeking more information about this year’s Wrapped launch date.
The streamer has not publicly hinted at a date yet, but it does currently have a placeholder page on its website teasing Spotify Wrapped 2025.
Based on historical dates, its unlikely that Spotify will announce Wrapped 2025 over the weekend. That means the most likely dates for the launch of Spotify Wrapped 2025 would be sometime next week.
Either way, Spotify likely wants to achieve maximum press and social media attention for the feature.
How do I access Spotify Wrapped 2025?
When Wrapped 2025 is released, youll be able to access it as you have in years past: through the Spotify app on iOS and Android.
On Spotifys Wrapped 2025 placeholder page, the company provides a QR code that users can scan to download the Spotify app. The page also includes a message telling users to Get the updated app to experience 2025 Wrapped at its best.
Hello once again, and welcome back to Fast Companys Plugged In.
I didnt buy a new phone this year. Or a new laptop, tablet, or smartwatch. That hasnt been a hardship. Ive just been perfectly content with the gear I already ownboth a satisfying feeling and a boon to my pocketbook.
Instead of being splashy budget busters, the new products that made me happiest in 2025 have been relatively inexpensive items that bring clever twists to seemingly mundane categories. This week, Im going to tell you about three Ive found especially rewarding. (Im citing their list prices, butthis being Black Friday weekall are widely available at steep discounts as I write this.)
The mother of all power banks. Most of the innumerable external batteries Ive owned have been thoroughly unmemorable. Not Ankers $119 Laptop Power Bank, a recent gift from my wife, who bought it off TikTok.
As its name indicates, the Laptop Power Banks massive 25,000mAh capacity is enough to charge a computer. It can also handle a tablet, such as my iPad Pro. Or a smartphone. Or other gadgets such as a digital camera. Or how about all of them at the same time?
Even if you do charge four devices at once, you wont need to lug four USB cables. Along with two portsone USB-C, one full-size USB-Athe Anker has a built-in cable that retracts into its case, and another that doubles as a wrist strap. Most power banks use LEDs to give you, at best, a vague sense of how much juice is left; this one has a fancy color display with a gauge that indicates precisely how much power remains, a battery health indicator, and other useful stats.
Now the Laptop Power Bank is decidedly chonkymore of a briefcase or backpack accessory than something youd slip in a pocket. If all youre looking to do is occasionally top off your phone, its way more battery than you need. But by providing enough power to last through the busiest of workdays, its liberated me from hunting for wall outlets at conferences and running my fingers along the undersides of airplane seats in hopes of finding a power jack there. I get a little thrill every time I use it.
The best smartphone wallet Ive owned. I used to carry a wallet so hopelessly overstuffed that George Costanza himself might have pointed and laughed. That was until I managed to downsize to one of those magnetic wallets that stick to the back of a phone. I carry my drivers license, one credit card, an ATM card, the badge that gets me into my office building, and maybe a $20 bill or two, and thats about it. Its the one place in my life where I feel like a preternaturally organized person.
But I havent been wild about most of the phone wallets Ive used. Some were too tight: Only two to three cards fit in, and they were almost impossible to extract. Others were too loose, so cards went flying whenever I dropped my phone. And they were all made of leather that tended to end up looking battered and disreputable.
Peak Designs $50 Mobile Wallet is unlike any other phone wallet Ive triedand much, much better. Made of sturdy cloth, it handles as many cards as I ever carry, and protects them from accidental exits with a magnetic flap. Most ingeniously, tugging on the flap causes the cards to travel slightly out of the wallet, where its easy to pluck the one I want. Its like having it delivered by a butler.
The Mobile Wallet pairs with Peaks Everyday Case, which also sells for about $50 and is equally worth it. Wrapped in a similar fabric-y material, its easy to get on and off my iPhone and remains in mint condition after months of use. The case features Peaks SlimLink, a mounting technology that secures the case to a variety of accessoriesincluding a mount I installed on my e-bike to let my iPhone double as a GoPro-style action camera.
A book light I actually use. Early this year, I pledged to read more dead-tree booksespecially the ones piled in a Jenga-like stack on my nightstand. Im still behind, in part because I like to read in bed after my wife has dozed off. Ink and paper do not mix well with utter darkness.
This problem was theoretically solved decades ago by tiny clip-on book lights. But theyve always struck me as plasticky, fragile, and inelegant. The fact that they use AAA batteries doesnt make them any more appealing.
Not long ago, however, a new generation of snakelike, USB-C-rechargable book lights came to my attention. Instead of clipping one onto a tome, you drape it around your neck, then bend it to direct beams of light from both ends at the pages youre reading. The one I bought, Kikkerlands Hands-Free Book Light, lists for $35. Other options exist, including ones from a company called Glocusent.
If theres a downside to wearing a book light twisted around your neck, its that it looks pretty goofy, as my wife has helpfully pointed out several times. But shes the only person whos seen me using mine. Did I mention that shes usually asleep when I have it on?
Youve been reading Plugged In, Fast Companys weekly tech newsletter from me, global technology editor Harry McCracken. If a friend or colleague forwarded this edition to youor if you’re reading it on fastcompany.comyou can check out previous issues and sign up to get it yourself every Friday morning. I love hearing from you: Ping me at hmccracken@fastcompany.com with your feedback and ideas for future newsletters. I’m also on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads, and you can follow Plugged In on Flipboard.
[A note on last weeks newsletter, which discussed my experiences with Googles Gemini 3 Pro LLM: A couple of the issues I cited involved the earlie Gemini 2.5 Flash model, which still powers the Gemini chatbots Fast mode. Ive updated the version of the newsletter on FastCompany.com to clarify this.]
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Ive worked for myself for nearly a decade, and in all but one of those years Ive earned more than the U.K. average salary. Some years its been a little more. Im naturally frugal, and even during the rockiest stretches, theres always been enough to cover the basicsplus a safety net if I ever truly needed it.
Yet I worry about money constantly, gnawed by the sense that Im only one missed invoice from financial collapse. Although Im generally wary of self-diagnosis, the term money dysmorphiaa disconnect between how we feel about our finances and the realityfits me like a glove.
From the rise of HENRYs (high earners, not rich yet) to the boom in income stacking, todays workplace trends illustrate just how messed up our relationship with finances has become. While money dysmorphia isnt a clinical term, its a shorthand that many workers now recognize.
Credit Karma reports that 29% of Americans experience it, especially millennials and Gen Z, so Im in good company. But could the nature of solopreneurshipthe feast-or-famine cycles, the autonomy, the pressure to slay in your own lanemake us even more prone?
Its absolutely heightened for solopreneurs, freelancers, and anyone with an unstable income, says Alex King, founder of financial education platform Generation Money. Without a fixed monthly salary, they normalize volatility and uncertainty, which can create a sense of inadequacy or inflated confidence in their finances.
The numbers paint an intriguing picture. Advice site Freelancing Support reported that 41% of freelancers struggled with poor financial well-being in 2024, and a 2025 study found that three in four U.S. solopreneurs have less than six months worth of savingsor no safety net at all. Plenty of people have good reasons to be anxious.
But a surprising portion are on solid ground: The number of six-figure solopreneurs has almost doubled since 2020, and research from the Minneapolis Fed shows that self-employed workers earn significantly more over their careers than those in traditional jobs.
Everyones always thriving, innovating, scaling
Kim Berndt, cofounder of the fashion tech collaboration lab We.art studio in Cologne, Germany, has been a solopreneur since 2017. After three years of not paying herself a salary, her numbers finally look stable. Emotionally, though, she feels anything but. Social media plays a significant role in warping her sense of financial reality.
Its the biggest scam, because it creates the illusion that everyone is always thriving, innovating, scaling, she says. The two industries I straddletech and fashionglorify speed and visibility, yet theyre the Wild West when it comes to pay.
Berndt has accepted that she may never feel stable, especially in an emerging field that many still dont understand and that offers little clarity around value. I chose self-employment, so I have to find ways to cope, she says.
I identify with Berndts me-against-the-world mentality, so I was curious to hear what financial therapist Elana Feinsmith had to say about this predicament. I told her about the ripple effects of my own money dysmorphia: oscillating between avoiding my bank balance and obsessively checking it, hesitating to charge fairly, and feeling guilt and shame over basic spending.
Finances are like an iceberg, she says. The numbers sit above the waterline, but below is where the dark, murky feelings live. She encourages me to examine not just the volatility of my work but also the money scripts I learned earlier in life. It doesnt take her long to extract that being the eldest daughter (surprise!) has something to do with it.
Figure out the amount that would calm your nervous system, then project a few years down the line to see the real picture, she tells me. A panic alarm sounds in my headif only it were that simple. Feinsmith says that reaction is typical of money dysmorphia. It makes long-term planning seem impossible, and she sees clients grapple with it at every income level.
Addressing the iceberg
There are now 72.9 million independent workers in the U.S., and almost everyone wants to leave corporate jobs to start their own businesses, amid the fifth year of persistent inflation. King warns that these conditions are likely to breed more widespread money dysmorphia. But it doesnt have to define the solopreneur experience. Small structural changes can help close the gap between perception and reality.
Have separate accounts for personal and business finances, King advises. Combining them distorts whether you feel rich one month and poor the next. Avoid months of paying yourself nothing, and dont overpay yourself when things go well. Ideally, work toward a baseline salary or a fixed minimum to cover costs.
As the end of the year approaches, Im particularly beguiled by other freelancers 2025 roundups, where they highlight their wins, earnings, and learnings. Im all for championing the wins, but after ingesting a few, I fall into catastrophizing my own balance sheet. King points out that many of these updates confuse revenue with profit.
Theyre not saying I made X amount, but then had to deduct what I spent on outreach, subscriptions, and training, because thats not sexy, he says.
This year, Ill be approaching the freelance wrap-up posts with caution. And after consulting the experts, Im more convinced that theres no quick fix for financial dysmorphia. Yet just the idea of taking a pickax to my financial iceberg makes me feel calmer.
Perhaps thats the best economic stability a solopreneur can ask for: not perfect peace of mind, but the confidence to keep moving anyway.
If you loved the Lego Game Boy but couldnt get yourself to buy it because it was only a display piece that couldnt play actual Game Boy games, I’ve got great news for you: It’s no longer merely a clever block of bricks.
Substance Labs, a merry band of Lego and gaming lovers based in Switzerland, have created a kit that retrofits the official brick-perfect Lego set into an unofficial pixel-perfect playable Game Boy. The name of this wündertronics is BrickBoy. Yes, its a Kickstarter project, so the usual may not deliver caveats apply.
Substance Labs calls itself a team of creators and engineers who grew up building with Lego and gaming on the classics [who have] spent the last years working across hardware, software, and product design, from open-source projects to custom electronics. I need to believe they will deliver on their promise because I need to believe that dreams do come true sometimes. And apparently, given the more than $500,000 that they have collected so far from project supporters, many other people feel the same way.
Substance Labs says the prototypes are built and tested. We have shipped a naked kit to early testers, creators, and magazines, the company says. Now we are ready to move into the next phase together with you.
The technical implementation of the BrickBoy kit is modular, allowing users to install the electronic core into the Lego chassis in under 10 minutes without soldering or coding. The hardware fits directly inside the assembled model, activating a functional display and speaker system that runs freeware, home-brew titles, and legally obtained ROMs. While the base unit relies on digital files, an optional third-party cartridge reader add-on allows the system to interface with physical Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance cartridges.
The nonfunctional Lego kit [Photo: Lego]
Kits start at $115 for the essential edition, which will make your Lego model play original Game Boy games. A $196 collectors kit model plays every Game Boy title, including Classic, Color, and Advance, without any limitations. The Substance Labs designers say it has accelerable gameplay for faster sessions (so you can pace through long Pokémon games), a customizable backlight, Bluetooth audio, wireless game loading, and system updates. They have other versions, like the Gamer and Collector editions, which have additional features like Bluetooth audio and an “Exposition Mode” that keeps the unit powered and lit for display purposes.
A 3D rendering of the Substance Labs Gamer Kit [Image: Substance Labs]
I dont care much about the display purposes myself. My home might be the closest thing to the Lego Housecomplete with a Lego brick minefield all over the floor, thanks to my sonso I welcome the idea of turning all these Lego nostalgia sets into functional gear. The Danish company has been milking the 80s and 90s with sets like Lego Atari and Lego Pac-Man, which are cool and all, but do nothing but sit on a shelf gathering dust.
The BrickBoy is a perfect example of how Lego could perhaps think of a way to make its sets actually usable objects. Not all of them would be possible to turn into a real thing, but models like the Game Boy, with its spot-on dimensions and proportions, are ideal.
I get it, though. Theres probably not enough business to justify the engineering effort to mass-produce something like this. So Lego will leave it to the obsessives. Now Substance Labs better Miyamoto the hell out of this thing and hurry up with the deliveries, because I really need to get it for my son this holiday season. Hes already a Mario junkie, and he will become a Tetris addict too, just like his dad.
