The Most-Read WIRED Gear Stories of 2018

A review of the Air Fryer, a three-month sojourn in Bing, and a user's guide to how to disable throttling on an iphoness all topped this year's list.
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How to Take Back Your Facebook News Feed

Apple Will Keep Throttling iphonesss With Old Batteries. Here's How to Stop It

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Are Air Fryers Worth It?

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Why Didn’t I Get an Emergency Presidential Alert Text?

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One of the great controversies in recent years was the revelation that Apple had been purposefully throttling iphoness performance as the device's battery degraded. Then the company released a slate of new phoness, and people rushed to buy them, thinking, surely I am now inoculated from throttled performance. Ha ha, silly consumer! We learned this fall that Apple will continue the practice even in its newer iphoness 8, 8 Plus, and X models. Lucky for you, news editor Brian Barrett put together a handy guide for how to bypass the throttling that proved so popular, it made our list of most-read Gear stories of the year. Here, nine other stories that helped us make sense of consumer technology this year.

  • Image may contain Mailbox and Letterbox
    HOTLITTLEPOTATO
    01

    How to Take Back Your Facebook News Feed

    It's easy to feel beholden to the social network's tweaks, but there are plenty of ways to customize your experience.

  • lberto Pezzali/NurPhoto/Getty Images
    02

    Apple Will Keep Throttling iphonesss With Old Batteries. Here's How to Stop It

  • Samantha Cooper
    03

    Are Air Fryers Worth It?

    Can the trendy, expensive countertop air fryer outperform a simple sheet pan in an oven?

  • SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images
    04

    Why Didn’t I Get an Emergency Presidential Alert Text?

  • JOSH EDELSON/AFP/Getty Images
    05

    Facebook Is Testing Its Dating Service. Here’s How It’s Different From Tinder

  • Hotlittlepotato
    06

    I Used Only Bing for 3 Months. Here's What I Found—and What I Didn't

  • Ian C. Bates
    07

    Surface Go Is Microsoft’s Big Bet on a Tiny-Computer Future

  • Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
    08

    The Best Cheap phoness for Almost Every Budget

    There’s little reason to pay top dollar for a smartphones. These iphonesss and androids devices—ranging from $150 to $600—stood up to WIRED’s testing.

  • Photograph: Olly Curtis/Getty Images
    09

    Want a Better PC? Try Building Your Own

    Assembling a computer yourself is a good way to learn how they work.

  • The Weather Channel
    10

    How The Weather Channel Made That Insane Storm Surge Animation

Andrea Valdez is the editor of WIRED.com. Before arriving at WIRED in 2017, she worked at Texas Monthly for 10 years, first as a fact checker, then as a columnist, and, ultimately, as the editor of texasmonthly.com. She is the author of How to Be a Texan: The Manual. Valdez ... Read more
Editor of Wired.com
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