Apple delivered financial results during its summertime quarter that exceeded analyst projections, despite being caught in the crosshairs of a global trade war at the same time the trendsetting company is scrambling to catch up to its Big Tech peers in the artificial intelligence race.
The performance announced Thursday was driven largely by strong initial demand for its iPhone 17 lineup that went on sale last month.
One reason Apple is so confident is that it’s supply-constrained. In other words, for at least some iPhone models, it just can’t make enough to fulfill demand. Cook specifically called out Greater China revenue decreasing largely because the company faced iPhone supply constraints, and said that generally Apple was “constrained on several [iPhone] 17 models.”
Selling as many iPhones as you can make is a good problem to have, but it does make it tough to get an idea of how the long run of iPhone 17 sales will go. The bulk of iPhone 17 sales are yet to come, but Apple can’t actually tell how strong demand is for each model.
Cook said that the company still plans to release an updated version of Siri next year, and said that there were more forthcoming partnerships like the company’s agreement to integrate OpenAI’s ChatGPT into Apple Intelligence.
“Our intention is to integrate with more people over time,” Cook said.
After a year, the iPad Mini 7 has become my most used iPad, not because it’s the best iPad, but because it’s the most useful in the most situations.
Apple this week made iPhone 17, iPhone Air, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone 17 Pro Max parts available to order through its self-service repair store in the United States, Canada, and some European countries.
Affinity has announced a complete overhaul of its design suite. Starting today, the company is unifying all its tools into a single app for vector, photo, and layout work, and making it permanently free.
It does seem that many people want a new phone that looks different from the previous phone. And it does seem from the rumors, that Apple will have a lot of new phones that look different from the previous phones in the next couple of years.
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Those who are affected have described the noise as static, an audible hiss, white noise, rain, and an ocean-like sound similar to holding a seashell up to the ear. There have been reports of users hearing the static sound in ANC, Adaptive, and Transparency modes.
At eight episodes, “Down Cemetery Road” lacks the drum-tight concision that makes “Slow Horses” such an addictive watch. But the show shares enough positive qualities with its predecessor, from a mordant wit to some riveting action once things heat up, that “Slow Horses” fans will find plenty to tide them over between seasons. And with two stars captured on location amid gown-clad dons and grassy quads, “Down Cemetery Road” has a distinct terroir of its own.
The desktop-focused photo cataloging and editing app introduces the AI-powered Assisted Culling feature to help select the best shots from a large set of images.
Five years ago, Boise illustrator Kelly Knopp felt Idaho's strangest stories deserved a visual treatment for future generations. He turned the state's hidden history, including the parachuting beavers, a house full of pet bears and the 'ugliest car ever built,' into a colorful adventure guide for kids.
In 2025, Knopp's stories have turned the page and made the jump from paper to pixels. It's not a video game, and it's not exactly homework either, but hand a kid an iPad with a talking beaver and suddenly, Idaho history might not seem so dull anymore.
Featuring more than 50 levels to enjoy, the premise is simple. Guide the friendly amphibian to swallow a glowing orb. But getting there is a challenge.
Apple says that developers can submit an update to address a major bug even if there's another app version that's still being reviewed.
I'm guessing Apple is almost ready to push iOS 26 to everyone, which means there may be another round of complains soon.
Unless the new clear-or-frosty toggle really works?
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After they separated, Kate's ex refused to disband the family group. But without his consent, the children couldn’t be transferred to a new one. “I wrongly assumed being the custodial parent with a court order meant I’d be able to have Apple move my children to a new family group, with me as the organizer,” says Kate. But Apple couldn’t help. Support staff sympathized but said their hands were tied because the organizer holds the power. (Apple declined to comment for this article.)
The consequences of such cases are not abstract. When families break down, family sharing systems can allow a noncustodial or abusive partner or parent to cling to digital control of their children. Their digital lives can remain in a coercive situation, even when their physical worlds are being forcibly moved on. Kate recalls her own children faced constant aggressive questioning about their movements, social interactions, and activities based on data served up by Apple Family Sharing. “It was frightening and insanely frustrating to realize we were still not free,” she says.
The standard advice given online under such circumstances is what opened this very story: Torch the accounts and start again, losing purchases, memories, and digital identities in the process. It's simple, when presented with the alternative, but hardly a satisfactory fix. Fortunately, Kate’s tale has a happier ending. Her children wore down her ex by repeating a single refrain every time he contacted them: Disband the family group. Eventually, he gave in, and Kate could set up a new family group with the original accounts. “Finally, we could all exhale,” she says. “But kids should not have to parent their own parent because tech companies are severely lacking in policies for cases like ours.”
Based on Apple’s history, the public launches for these updates should arrive within the next week or so—give or take a couple days.
[...]
These updates include new toggles to alter the Liquid Glass design, a big Apple Intelligence language expansion, plus the return of Slide Over on iPad, among other smaller updates.
Adobe has kicked off its annual Max event, giving us a first look at new and upcoming generative AI tools launching for the company’s Photoshop, Premiere Pro, and Lightroom Creative Cloud apps. These include updates to Photoshop’s Generative Fill feature that aim to give creators more control over adding, removing or modifying content, and tools that can automate some of the more time-consuming elements of editing photos and videos.
From a technical point of view, VirtualBox works well and is capable of running a variety of Windows apps and software on Macs with both Intel and Apple Silicon processors. And, of course, we welcome the fact that the app is free for personal and educational use.
However, the complexity of the program means that it will primarily appeal to corporate users who can rely on their IT department to manage VirtualBox for them, or perhaps developers or students who have the technical knowledge to manage the installation process for themselves.
AI writing aid Grammarly is now part of Superhuman, alongside Coda, Superhuman Mail, and a new AI assistant called Superhuman Go. The new Superhuman suite, including all those tools, will be available starting today for everyone with a paid Grammarly Pro subscription.
If you want to see how well a system is designed, look at the edges, look at the gaps. No useful system is going to work perfectly in all situations, but you can sharpen your judgment if you look at how graceful the degradation is at these edges and gaps.
Oh, and this definitely applies to humans too.
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But once again, it was only a few minutes after takeoff that the painful screech returned. Careful adjustments or yawning would fix the issue, but only for a couple of minutes at most. I figured that the new foam was trapping more heat, reducing airflow and ventilation, and that heat was somehow playing a role in loosening the seal. When paired with the aircraft’s loud, steady hum, a feedback loop was created.
[...]
I love the AirPods Pro 3, but with a denser fit that risks making them uncomfortable for some users and now this painful flight feedback issue, the AirPods Pro 3 aren’t as easy to recommend as the previous AirPods Pro 2.
Citing internal Apple data, Bailey revealed that Apple Pay has stopped more than $1 billion in fraud over the past year. How does that compare to traditional credit and debit card fraud prevention? According to Bailey, Apple Pay reduces fraud by over 60% compared to those traditional payment methods, and in some cases, that number spikes to as high as 90%.
Apple says it will soon introduce an Apple Wallet feature that will allow U.S. users to create a digital ID using their passport, which will then be able to be used at select TSA checkpoints for domestic travel. The feature, previously announced as part of the iOS 26 release, comes on the heels of Apple’s expansion of Wallet as more than a payment mechanism or ticket holder, but also a secure place to store a user’s digital identity.
Apple has approached all this regulatory conflict from a perspective that they’re right, and the regulators are wrong. That the App Store, as Apple wants it, is (a) good for users, (b) fair to developers, and (c) competitive, not anti-competitive, legally. But even if Apple is correct about that, at some point, after being handed loss after loss in rulings from courts and regulatory bodies around the globe, shouldn’t they change their strategy and start trying to offer their own concessions, rather than wait for bureaucrat-designed concessions to be forced upon them?
In decertifying the class, Rogers said the plaintiffs failed to provide a model "capable of reliably showing classwide injury and damages in one stroke" by matching Apple accounts to consumers, while limiting the number of "unharmed" consumers in the class.
She ruled after an expert hired by Cupertino, California-based Apple found "alarming" errors in the plaintiffs' model.
Now he’s best known for the crime-fueled duology of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, but when Vince Gilligan was first starting out in television, it was in the realm of sci-fi. Over seven years he penned a number of classic episodes of The X-Files, ranging from a monster-themed spoof of Cops to a bizarre high-speed car chase that was his first collaboration with Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston. And now he’s back in the genre with the upcoming Apple TV series Pluribus, which starts streaming in November.
But Gilligan tells me that, while he had been itching to return to sci-fi, actually getting there was a bit of an accident. “I didn’t make a conscious decision to make another sci-fi show,” he tells The Verge. Instead, he came up with a specific idea and discovered no other genre would do. “I realized there was no other way to explain the happenings other than science fiction.”
Spotify has announced a redesigned version of its Apple TV app that the company says has been “rebuilt from the ground up for a faster, smarter, more visual experience.” The tvOS version of the Spotify app is also gaining several welcome features from the mobile version, but the biggest updates include the addition of video podcasts and music videos.
The Baseus Nomos 8-in-1 Magnetic Charging Station is one of those rare accessories that fits almost anywhere and instantly makes life easier. It’s powerful enough to charge nearly every device you own, yet compact enough to disappear into a suitcase when traveling.
In the end, deleting voicemails may save some space, but as with an increasing number of scenarios in Apple’s operating systems, it’s not a straightforward situation.
Apple is set to top $100bn in annual revenues from its services business for the first time this year, despite mounting legal and regulatory pressure on its App Store.
[...]
Services are on track to make up a quarter of Apple’s revenue but as much as 50 per cent of its profit, said JPMorgan analyst Samik Chatterjee, reflecting the “stickiness” of products such as Apple Pay and recurring payments for iCloud storage.
The AirPods Pro 2 that I am currently using is still working fine. Occasionally, I will hear crackling noise in my left ear, but other than, the battery still hold charges, and audiobooks and podcasts and music still sound good in my ears.
So, I am not in a hurry to get the new AirPods Pro 3. But, I am concerned, after reading all these mixed reviews, because I know I want to stay with AirPods Pro when the current pair goes bad.
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Adobe’s computational photography app, Project Indigo, had a bit of trouble adapting to the new square-format selfie sensor in the iPhone 17 series. [...] But the company has decided to simply turn off access to the front-facing camera entirely, in order to get some version of Project Indigo out the door with iPhone 17 support.
After enabling billing status tracking in Timing’s preferences, you can set a default billing status for new time entries and track the lifecycle through billable, billed, and paid statuses.
The first preview release of the Swift SDK for Android was published this week, allowing developers to build Android apps in Swift with official tooling and making it easier to share code across iOS and Android.
In an online landscape characterised by doom and division, it stands out: a huge, collective endeavour based on voluntarism and cooperation, with an underlying vision that’s unapologetically utopian – to build “a world where every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge”. It has weathered teething troubles (such as a “joke” edit that suggested a loyal aide to Robert F Kennedy was in fact involved in his and his brother’s assassinations) to become a place in which civility and neutrality are the guiding stars, and levels of accuracy match those of academic textbooks.
Wales’s new book, The Seven Rules of Trust, is an attempt to distil the secrets of its success. They include things such as having a strong, clear, positive purpose (the slogan “Wikipedia is an encyclopedia” is a surprisingly powerful reminder that keeps editors honest); assuming good faith and being courteous; refraining from taking sides and being radically transparent. It’s a no-nonsense “lessons learned” book that might otherwise find itself occupying shelf space next to Steven Bartlett’s Diary of a CEO (subtitle: The 33 Laws of Business and Life) – but Wikipedia’s ubiquity, and the way it has dramatically bucked the trend of online toxicity – make it potentially far more significant.
There is one thing about Wikipedia that I really don't enjoy. It's a very small thing, in the grand scheme of stuff happening everywhere. But it really really annoys me.
And that's hovering. When I use Safari on the Mac to read any Wikipedia articles, if my mouse cursor happens to stray into any links on the articles, up comes an inline popup that blocks what I am reading.
And because there are a lot of links in a typical Wikipedia article, and because my mouse cursor is right there, and because I am scrolling the articles, getting a link right under the cursor is a very common thing.
This I really really don't like.
(End of rant.)
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On the one hand: The site is back online as I write this. The app still works. I’m writing the first draft of this article in Nisus Writer Pro on a Mac running macOS 26 Tahoe, and it’s fine. You can still download it and buy a license. At least one human being is actively involved in the company. It’s (mostly) alive!
On the other hand: All available evidence suggests that the app, and the company behind it, are on life support, and the prognosis is doubtful. It’s (mostly) dead!
On my Mac I could automate this however I want to, but I ideally want automation that works on my iPhone so I can post while I’m globe-trotting, or on the living room couch far, far away from my desk in the same room.
This meant it was ideal for automation in Drafts.
FitWoody is an all encompassing fitness app that doesn’t make you feel bad. It listens to your body, learns your habits, and adapts your experience to help you build real, meaningful habits – all based off of your data in Apple Health.
Disguised inside a thin, credit-card form factor, the SwitchBot Wallet Finder connects to the Find My app on your iPhone, so you can follow its location, and it even houses a speaker so you can make it beep to help you find your wallet when it inevitably gets lost somewhere in your home.
Nomad's new Apple Watch band features a combination of grade 4 titanium for the links and FKM rubber between them for added flexibility. The presence of fluoroelastomer rubber also gives it an eye-catching, sporty look.
Writing good software is hard. Continue to support and update software is even harder.
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I recently got a rare tour of the facilities to see — and hear — firsthand how Apple developed, tested and fine-tuned the AirPods Pro 3, which it calls the “world’s best” in-ear noise-canceling wireless earbuds.
From world-class listening labs to advanced motion-capture stations, what I saw convinced me that Apple is no longer just a phone or computer manufacturer but, in fact, one of the world’s largest hi-fi companies.
“Getting that virtual studio going and into that building in Stamford has made our jobs much easier to do,” says Royce Dickerson, the head of sports production for Apple TV. “We’ve become a lot more efficient in the way we produce our content, but working with them every day, my team with Seth’s team, it’s been a fun partnership, and we’ve learned a lot about our customers and their customers along the way, and we’re going to continue to iterate and innovate around our learnings.”
The M5 MacBook Pro is just a faster version of a familiar laptop. But it’s well positioned to stay useful even as AI becomes a more pervasive element of MacOS and Mac apps.
But ten years ago, Apple got serious. It shipped the very first iPad Pro, and began a decade-long conversation about whether the iPad could be used for work and even whether or not it was a computer.
Today, the M5 iPad Pro and iPadOS 26 have settled a lot of old scores. But it’s been a long, strange journey from “Hey Siri” day in San Francisco to now.
SwitchBot’s Candle Warmer Lamp is Matter-enabled (meaning it works uniformly across all your major smart home platforms, including Google Home and Alexa) and comes with an app that lets you fine-adjust parameters like the scent and lighting levels from your phone. Yes, you can use your phone to make your candle smellier (or less smelly). Sure, you could do the same thing with a candle warming lamp that isn’t connected to the internet, but walking over to a lamp and moving a slider with your hands? Yuck, who’s got time for that?
This means that third-party photo apps and even cloud backup services will finally be able to back up images automatically and reliably in the background, rather than relying on workarounds or waiting for the user to reopen the app.
[Apple] would be able to make its case more convincingly if it walked away from the advertising business altogether.
Apple has started shipping artificial intelligence servers built in a factory in Houston, it said on Thursday, part of the company's plans to invest $600 billion in the U.S. in the next few years.
The servers contain special chips that help Apple deliver AI features with the same privacy measures on its iPhones and Mac computers.
Sure looks like Apple is rushing to fill in the gaps in their APIs that allow third-party apps to do things that only first-party apps can do.
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In this context of screen omnipresence, to measure the amount of time you spend looking at a screen is simply to ask how much time you spend awake and cogent, for almost everything you do now requires a screen to do it. (If you wear a watch or a ring at night for sleep tracking, your slumber will be reclaimed by a screen, too.) The fallacy of screen time holds that measuring a ubiquitous phenomenon provides information that allows for control of that phenomenon—that keeping records of a chronic state will give rise to certain habits of self-healing.
Apple could be forced to pay up to £1.5bn in damages after losing a collective legal action court case brought on behalf of 36 million UK iPhone and iPad users, both consumers and businesses.
The Competition Appeals Tribunal found that Apple had abused its dominant position by charging "excessive and unfair" prices in the form of the 30% commission, which it usually levies both on app sales and in-app payments.
Even if your note needs are more basic though, Notes still has you covered. And that's why you should have some idea of what exactly Apple's built-in note-taker can do for you. Here are eight iOS Notes tips that I either turn to often or think people should know about if they want to use the app more efficiently.
I know it’s trite to say “a brand is a promise,” but what is the promise of these creative apps from Apple? It mostly seems to be that they’re used as vehicles to show off in demos for new hardware, new chip designs, or new platform features.
I don’t play video game versions of board games. Why would you? The whole point of video games is to be faster, more visually arresting, and less reliant on other humans than old games played with dice and cards. But a recent family board game night was derailed by clashing schedules and family civil war, so I spent a Saturday night trying them out on the iPhone instead.
OpenAI today said that it has acquired Software Applications Incorporated and its AI app, Sky. Software Applications Incorporated and Sky were created by a team of former Apple employees known for their work on Apple's Shortcuts feature and the Workflow app that preceded it.
The Savant, which originally had a Sept. 26 premiere date, was yanked in the weeks following the Sept. 10 assassination of conservative political pundit Charlie Kirk. Language on the landing page for the series has since vacillated from “Coming Soon” to “At a Later Date” to simply “2025.” As of this writing, the wording again reads, “At a Later Date.” (Lower down the same page it says, “Released: 2025″ — likely an oversight.)
It’s odd the language has been tweaked several times over the course of the month. Altering wording on the app is a manual process, and since each new iterative phrase basically means the same as the last, why do it? Yes, “Soon” means soon and “Later” means later and “2025” literally means this calendar year, but it’s all close enough considering the shifting language was first noticed as summer turned to fall. To not premiere in 2025 feels like a death sentence for the series.
WBD’s decision to formally hang up a “For Sale” sign, and all the media rumors about suitors other than Paramount, could also be nothing more than a play by Zaslav to boost WBD’s stock price (mission accomplished) and either make Ellison pay a lot more for WBD or delay things long enough that Zaslav can go forward with his plan to divide WBD in half and perhaps ensure he continues to have some sort of company to run.
[...]
And WBD-sympathetic sources have already started leaking word of other buyers with interest in its assets: Both the Times and Bloomberg floated Amazon as a possible suitor, while Bloomberg reported that Zaslav had told WBD staffers that Apple had interest as well.
Reducing screen time should not be a goal by itself. Reducing time spent on specific apps, or perhaps getting rid of specific apps, that should be under consideration.
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As Apple’s premium tablet enters its second decade, I spoke with the company’s Ted Merendino (from the iPad Product Marketing team) and Ty Jordan (Product Manager for System Experiences) to learn more about the evolution of the iPad Pro and iPadOS.
Given how many Mac-like features came to iPadOS 26 this year, I was curious to hear how the company approached putting all that Mac DNA into the iPad while still keeping it distinct, as well as the engineering challenges it presented. “One of the things that makes iPad such a unique device is it's extremely versatile, right?” Jordan said. “You can use it with touch, you can use it with a trackpad or a keyboard or the Apple Pencil, and that's really powerful. But it also actually makes an extremely challenging engineering and design problem to try and solve when you're thinking about something like the new windowing experience.”
Though plot details are largely being kept under wraps, the series centers around Rhea Seehorn’s character Carol, who is the only unhappy person in a world full of happiness. Apple’s summary says: “the most miserable person on Earth must save the world from happiness.”
“A lot of the conversations with quite a lot of the US media steered towards creating packages, which is a lot more common in this market than pretty much anywhere else. We actually looked at splitting into the first half of the season and second half, or we could carve out the sprint races. We went into quite a lot of detail. We went through the whole gambit and tried to keep an open mind about what’s best for the sport,” said Holmes. “Because we don’t have 1000s of hours of content, we broadly thought that if we can have a good contender that wants everything, it might be better than. There are pros and cons of both approaches, so there were quite complex discussions, different discussions, depending on who it was with.”
Now, after years of streaming availability on Apple TV, the company is finally releasing CODA on Blu-Ray and DVD.
Reached for comment, Apple confirmed the apps’ removal, saying it removed Tea Dating Advice and TeaOnHer from the App Store because they failed to meet Apple’s requirements around content moderation and user privacy. The company also said it saw an excessive number of user complaints and negative reviews, which included complaints of minors’ personal information being posted in these apps.
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has designated both Apple and Google as having "strategic market status" - effectively saying they have a lot of power over mobile platforms.
[...]
"Apple faces fierce competition in every market where we operate, and we work tirelessly to create the best products, services and user experience," the company said in a statement.
"The UK's adoption of EU-style rules would undermine that, leaving users with weaker privacy and security, delayed access to new features, and a fragmented, less seamless experience."
Health apps can encourage people to boost their fitness, such as running a certain distance, getting enough sleep, or eating the right foods.
But many apps do not use “evidence or theory-based” approaches to support these healthy changes and can give people goals that are “difficult to achieve".
The ARK plug-in (which powers the backend audio handling) is updated to version 12.3.3 to provide support for high-quality USB audio with AirPods Max (USB-C) headphones.
Apple has been working on a new framework called AppMigrationKit, which will be compatible with devices running iOS 26.1 and later, as well as iPadOS 26.1 and later.
Like iOS and iPadOS 26.1, the framework is currently in beta and will allow developers to include their app’s data during the migration process between Apple and non-Apple devices (which, for now, essentially means Android).
The second-generation Developer Strap offers data transfer speeds of up to 20 Gbps when connected to a Mac, whereas the original version was limited to USB 2.0 speeds of up to 480 Mbps.
“But look what you’re doing,” Jobs told him. “You are putting your reputation [first]. You’re worried about you looking bad, and you’re keeping your people from greatness. Imagine how they’re going to feel—the folks that are working in that plant in Harrodsburg, Kentucky, all your investors … you’re putting yourself above them and your company.”
The statement hit its mark. “And I said to them, you’re right. I’m afraid. And I’ll go fix that,” Weeks told Fortune. “And we went away, and we said, ‘Yes.'”
Netflix Inc. and Comcast Corp. are among the companies interested acquiring the film and TV library, as well as production assets, Bloomberg News reported previously.
Warner Bros. Chief Executive Officer David Zaslav briefed senior executives at the company on Tuesday, saying Amazon.com Inc. and Apple Inc. had also expressed interest, according to two people familiar with the discussions.
Mr Eddy Cue has just told Mr Matt Belloni in the podcast The Town, which you should listen if you are interested in the business of Hollywood, that Apple want to build up Apple TV with their own stuff and not by licensing (or buying, I guess) other people's stuff, and that Apple is not interested in doing news, such as CNN.
So, what would interest Apple from Warner Brothers Discovery? Acqui-hire the executives over at HBO?
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I trust in TextEdit. It doesn’t redesign its interface without warning, the way Spotify does; it doesn’t hawk new features, and it doesn’t demand I update the app every other week, as Google Chrome does. I’ve tried out other software for keeping track of my random thoughts and ideas in progress—the personal note-storage app Evernote; the task-management board Trello; the collaborative digital workspace Notion, which can store and share company information. Each encourages you to adapt to a certain philosophy of organization, with its own formats and filing systems. But nothing has served me better than the brute simplicity of TextEdit, which doesn’t try to help you at all with the process of thinking. Using the app is the closest you can get to writing longhand on a screen. I could make lists on actual paper, of course, but I’ve also found that my brain has been so irredeemably warped by keyboards that I can only really get my thoughts down by typing. (Apparently my internal monologue takes place in Arial typeface, fourteen-point font.)
It can handle your work or school during the day, and whatever project you want to throw at it on weekends. On top of that, the display and speakers mean it's also a killer media machine for when you want to throw on a movie or play a game. These are the kinds of in-between, “prosumer” devices Apple has always staked its claim on, which is why this laptop has remained in the lineup, despite the feeling of redundancy it gives me next to the 15-inch MacBook Air. For the right person, though, the M5 MacBook Pro will really please you.
But it is a very nice laptop, and if your screen is the most important part of your laptop, this low-end Pro does make a decent case for itself. It’s frustrating that the matte display is a $150 upcharge, but it’s an option you can’t get on an Air, and the improved display panel and faster ProMotion refresh rate make scrolling and animations all look smoother and more fluid than they do on an Air’s screen. I still mostly think that this is a laptop without a huge constituency—too much more expensive than the Air, too much slower than the other Pros—but the people who buy it for the screen should still be mostly happy with the performance and ports.
So maybe that’s where the M5 MacBook Pro fits: It’s a computer for people who feel they need more than a MacBook Air can give them, but don’t have a reasonable argument why they might need the high-end performance of a Pro or Max-level chip. That’s probably a bigger percentage of the Mac-using population than you might expect, and I’d imagine that it’s going to keep growing.
Before the Apple silicon introduction, we all wanted steady, predictable progress in Mac hardware development. We wanted each product in the lineup to be updated regularly and not whither on the vine for years. For the most part, Apple has delivered.
Basically, you get what you pay for. If you want a nicer iPad with a better screen and better accessories, the iPad Pro will provide. You can get by with less. To use the iPad Pro is a luxury, in a way. But if you love your iPad—whatever you use it for—you will get plenty of satisfaction out of the iPad Pro. It really is the ultimate expression of Apple’s vision for a tablet device.
That’s the biggest problem with the iPad Pro, really—not that it’s a bad tablet, but that it’s still so much more tablet than you need to do what iPadOS and its apps can currently do.
This is the paradox of the M5. Theoretically speaking, the new Neural Accelerator architecture should lead to notable gains in token generation and prefill time that may be appreciated on macOS by developers and AI enthusiasts thanks to MLX (more on this below). However, all these improvements amount to very little on iPadOS today because there is no serious app ecosystem for local AI development and tinkering on iPad. That ecosystem absolutely exists on the Mac. On the iPad, we’re left with a handful of non-MLX apps from the App Store, no Terminal, and the untapped potential of the M5.
You still don’t need a Vision Pro, but every time I put mine on, I keep looking for reasons not to take it off. I’m glad it continues pushing the hardware forward, but it’ll need to be a fraction of the price and weight before it could possibly gain broad appeal.
The third season of the critically-acclaimed dramedy will debut on Jan. 28 with a one-hour premiere episode. New episodes will air weekly thereafter through April 8.
Jason Segel returns to the lead the cast as Jimmy, described as “a grieving therapist who starts to break the rules and tell his clients exactly what he thinks. Ignoring his training and ethics, he finds himself making huge, tumultuous changes to people’s lives … including his own.”
Gobo, Red, Wembley, Mokey and Boober Fraggle are back for the holiday season! Today, Apple TV announced the all-new holiday special “The First Snow of Fraggle Rock,” to premiere globally on Friday, December 5. The special features a cameo appearance by musical artist and internet sensation Lele Pons that includes a harmonious duet of the classic, beloved “Fraggle Rock” song “Our Melody” with Gobo, along with two other holiday numbers.
!Camera’s use of LUTs for filter-like effects opens the app to a wide world of non-proprietary looks.
Unpredictability is part of the magic of film. The Huji Cam app has a random light effects option that adds light leaks to your photos. I never really know what to expect, and both the unpredictability and the light leaks themselves make the digital photos feel more like film.
Apple's Beats brand recently rolled out two new retailer-exclusive colors through Walmart in the U.S., debuting the Solo4 headphones in Drenched Gray and the Solo Buds earphones in Ivory.
Gibson, who until recently built surveillance technologies for Western government hacking tools maker Trenchant, may be the first documented case of someone who builds exploits and spyware being themselves targeted with spyware.
[...]
According to three sources who have direct knowledge of these cases, there have been other spyware and exploit developers in the last few months who have received notifications from Apple alerting them that they were targeted with spyware.
Attorney Gregory Garre of Latham & Watkins, arguing for Apple before the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, said a district judge had improperly expanded restrictions on Apple's App Store that she had imposed earlier in the lawsuit brought by “Fortnite” video game maker Epic Games.
I hope there is still a market for simple, uncomplicated, straightforward software for third-party developers.
But between the need to add AI to everything and the need to have constant new features to justify subscription prices, I fear that market has evaporated.
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The only one Pro product from Apple that I 'need' is AirPods Pro. It's a crowded city out there, both above ground and underground.
The other Pro product from Apple that I want is iPhone Pro. But that's for today. Who knows what happens when it's time for me to get a new phone, as we see Apple iterate between mini to Plus to Air just for my one buying cycle.
The reviewers today convinced me that MacBook Pro computers and iPad Pro computers are definitely not even something I want anymore. All the Pro-ness will be wasted on me and my wallet.
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Apple today shared a new "Great ideas start on Mac" ad, voiced by the late Dr. Jane Goodall, the well-known British ethologist and conservationist.
All in all it’s an effective, low-frills approach. We get a break from the brand’s vaunted product demos in favor of a thoughtful vibe that’s a world away from Apple’s sitcom-y “Underdogs” clips and its oft-explosive mini-epics.
Well, iOS 26.1 beta 4 is now available, and it introduces a new option to choose a more opaque look for Liquid Glass. The same option is also available on Mac and iPad.
I am sure there are some who will claim this undermines the entire premise of Liquid Glass, and I do not know that they are entirely wrong. Some might call it greater personalization and customization, too. I think it feels unfocused. Apple keeps revisiting translucency and finding it needs to add more controls to compensate.
The fourth beta of iOS 26.1 includes an option to turn off the Lock Screen swipe that activates the camera, a feature that iPhone users have been wanting for years.
Apple's smartwatch lineup is getting better year after year. This year is no exception with the new Apple Watch series 11, Apple Watch SE 3 and the Apple Watch Ultra 3. Whether you've got a brand new model to get acquainted with or you're trying out the new features in WatchOS 26, there are options to keep you productive, become more active and take control of your life. These are the features I love the most.
Being able to get a drive chart inside the Live Activity for NFL and college football games is a fantastic addition. It will enable seeing more fine-grained status updates for a game right from the iPhone Lock Screen.
On first blush, it looks a lot like a power bank, but it opens out, transforming into a three-bay wireless charging station. [...] Plus, it can handle all your devices simultaneously, allowing them all to charge at full speed.
Oura is launching a redesigned app with expanded stress-tracking insights as it develops new blood pressure features that could identify signs of hypertension.
With Foundation Models, Apple has given developers the power to use Apple Intelligence large language models (LLMs) from within their own apps using a few lines of code. This is an important step toward the endpoint AI ecosystem the company is painstakingly working to create.
I spoke with developers from The Omni Group to find out more about what these models can do and how they use them in their apps — specifically CEO Ken Case and legendary evangelist for automation on Apple’s products, Sal Soghoian.
The iPhone maker’s lawyer Daniel Beard told the General Court in Luxembourg on Tuesday that the Digital Markets Act “imposes hugely onerous and intrusive burdens” at odds with Apple’s rights in the EU marketplace.
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Apple — seen as the biggest renegade against the EU’s crackdown — challenged the law on three fronts: EU obligations to make rival hardware work with its iPhone, the regulator’s decision to drag the hugely-profitable App Store under the rules, and a decision to probe whether iMessage should have faced the rules, which it later escaped.
I suspect I am not alone to find certain places where Liquid Glass is not good, and certain other places where Liquid Glass really shines.
Of course, we will all disagree which places belong to which category. Simply because we have different priorities at different places.
I enjoy Liquid Glass on the iPhone's lock screen. I seldom read notifications directly off the lock screen -- I usually just take a glance, and then launch the notifying apps. I also only allow notifications on the most essential apps.
I dislike Liquid Glass on the Control Center, because when the background seeps through to the buttons, some of these buttons looks like they are turned on. And I easily get confused.
But you will probably prioritize differently than me.
So a single button to switch between clear and tinted glass seems… unsatisfactory.
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What wearables can detect and measure – in varying combinations and with varying degrees of accuracy – is heart rate, temperature, movement and blood oxygen levels, which are then fed into algorithms that determine whether the picture painted by that data is of someone sleeping soundly or restlessly awake. “It could be a device that’s specifically measuring movement only, and it’s looking at algorithms that say if your arms are moving a lot you’re awake, if it’s not moving a lot it’s sleep,” Gordon says. But “that has very little agreement with what happens in your brain in terms of the qualitative aspect of sleep”.
The other challenge is that there isn’t a clear understanding of exactly what good sleep looks like, says Associate Prof Jen Walsh, director of the Centre for Sleep Science at the University of Western Australia in Perth. “It’s an area that’s debated within our profession,” she says. There’s sleep quantity – simply the amount of time spent asleep – and sleep quality, which is more complex and takes into account time spent in different stages of sleep, whether sleep is broken, how often and for how long. “Sleep quantity is quite easy to define and calculate, whereas sleep quality is somewhat harder,” she says. Current guidelines suggest adults should aim for between seven and nine hours of sleep a night but there isn’t such clear advice on what type of sleep – how much of each stage – is optimum.
At this year's Design Miami Paris, the design fair and Apple join forces to present the inaugural Designers of Tomorrow initiative, honouring four emerging practices whose work is 'powered by iPad', launched on the occasion of the new experiential iPad Pro with M5.
The exhibition showcases a range of media and craft techniques, demonstrating the ability of technology in assisting contemporary creativity and the process of making.
It all comes down to fit, pretty much. AirPods Pro 3 feel a lot nicer in my ears. They’re a lot lighter, in a way – in the sense that I don’t really think about the fact that I’m wearing them.
MLS and Apple are offering the league’s entire slate of playoff matches to all Apple TV subscribers at no additional cost, making the games available to a wider audience than just those who subscribe specifically to the MLS Season Pass service. The move builds on a strategy shift from the regular season and Leagues Cup that involved increasing the number of games available to those who subscribe to the broader entertainment service.
The human touch, and the focus on keeping the conversation on the bright side, is a fantastic tactic. It worked for me. Every morning I set out for a run, or prepare for a high-intensity workout, the workout buddy pats my back about the progress, and congratulates me at the end.
Maybe the idea of listening to a few words of encouragement, or “someone” to appreciate my efforts, is what I really needed to stay on track and get rid of my anxiety. Either way, it worked.
Balance is a meditation app that delivers a personalized program designed to help relieve stress and improve sleep, focus, and mood. It does this by providing an audio library of meditations that are curated based on how you answer the app’s daily questions. As a result, the meditations become more effective over time.
The launch of the iPhone Air as the first eSIM-supported smartphone sold in China marks a pivotal moment in the country’s telecoms history, as state-owned mobile carriers vie for dominance in a changing landscape.
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Still, eSIM services in China remained in their infancy, according to Guo. The commercial trial licences came with limitations, such as the requirement to visit physical stores for activation, which undermined the primary convenience advantage of eSIM, he said.
Is some data better than no data, or are you worse off? That's probably what I want to know about wearables, rather than how good the data is.
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Almost exactly six years after it launched, Apple TV is at an inflection point. In the span of a week, the streaming service rebranded itself, struck its first standalone bundle deal with a competitor, and inked arguably its most significant sports rights deal yet.
Taken together, it suggests that the tech giant is gearing up to drive (pun intended) new subscribers and viewers to the service, which is loved among Hollywood types for its premium original content, and feared for its perceived lack of scale.
Apple nevertheless targets “exponential” growth with this new deal, and F1 team bosses believe the brand is capable of making it happen.
“I think it's very realistic,” McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown said. “I think it'll take time. They had a fantastic movie, which I think kind of whet their appetite, if you'd like. If you think about the reach of the different platforms they have and the technology that they have – and we’re in a very technology-driven sport – there’s a lot of enthusiasm.
Apple’s new iPhone 17 is kick-starting the company’s strongest growth in smartphone sales since the Covid-19 pandemic, as the biggest redesign of its flagship product in years proves a hit.
Early momentum for the redesigned versions of its mobile device has proven stronger than expected before its September launch, according to industry insiders who monitor Apple’s supply chain, mobile operators and the length of time customers must wait for deliveries.
Taken on their own, the Powerbeats Fit are an excellent pair of exercise earbuds. Everything that made the Beats Fit Pro our best workout headphones pick is accounted for here, including that secure but unobtrusive wingtip design, great sound quality and smooth functionality regardless of what kind of phone you have. But when better options have popped up in the years since their release, the Powerbeats Fit are hard to give a full recommendation.
What attracted me to Ulysses was how clean and distraction-free its user interface was. It isn’t littered with buttons, toolbars, and all sorts of tools useful for creating presentation charts and tables, but not so useful for writing a book or an article.
Ulysses’ approach is very much a hands-off sandbox that they hand you, rather than a strict checklist of how you should organize your project. It doesn’t lock you into using a format or structure of its own choosing.
Auvio is a neat audio engine for your iPhone. It offers everything you’d need to create your own immersive and personal soundscapes, whether you want them to fall asleep to, for focusing, or for studying.
Throughout the 2000s and early 2010s, Apple had an intuitive package of creative tools for its Mac computers, called iLife. There was iPhoto for photo management, iMovie for making movies, iDVD for burning those movies to discs, GarageBand for audio production, and finally, iWeb for creating websites. I loved using iWeb back in the day, so I thought it was time to revisit the app, and find out how its websites hold up to modern web standards.
Maybe the dawn of the new golden era of stupidity doesn’t begin when we submit to super-intelligent machines; it starts when we hand over power to dumb ones.
From what has been announced and revealed, there isn't really any indications, I don't think, that Apple TV will scale up the amount of content significantly in the near future. But it has indeed built up enough shows that I am tempted to watch some of the back catalogs.
If only I have tons of free time, and there aren't also tons of back catalogs on the other streaming services that I subscribe to.
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I don't watch F1 at all... except for the one night race once a year in the city where I am residing, on over-the-air free television. (Okay, it is not 'over-the-air'; it's really over-the-internet via Apple TV on Apple TV. No, not that Apple TV.)
Even then, I watch it more for the beautiful visuals rather than the actual sports.
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Apple TV will provide coverage of all Formula 1 events, including practice, qualifying and Sprint sessions, as part of the streamer's existing $12.99 per month subscription, which comes ad-free. Certain F1 races and all practice sessions will also be available for free in the Apple TV app throughout the season, the companies said in a statement.
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F1 TV Premium, the league's own content offering that's popular with racing fans, will continue to be available in the U.S. but will now require an Apple TV subscription. Once a customer subscribes to Apple TV, F1 TV Premium will be included in their Apple subscription rather than as a standalone offering.
F1 felt that moving to Apple would make it easier to further grow the series in the US, as it is now attracting a younger audience that is more likely to subscribe to streaming services like Apple TV.
Apple also promised to work with F1 on further improving its broadcast product, looking at ways to integrate technology used to film its wildly successful F1 movie starring Brad Pitt.
Apple says to use the tips that are most comfortable to you. But also, one of AirPods Pro 3’s best features—improved noise cancellation—depends on getting a good seal.
So I could downsize the tips for more comfort, and lose some noise canceling benefit, or settle for a mild level of discomfort.
A new app with a straightforward name wants to make it easier for people to fix their stuff by helping them find trustworthy repair services near them.
The Repair App launched today, on a day that’s being celebrated as International Repair Day. The app is currently available in beta form in the US and France, because that’s where cofounders Robert Lise and Caleb Faruki reside, respectively. If the app does well, more countries should be added soon.
“Our Constitution forbids this,” the lawsuit said. “None of our laws require businesses to ‘card’ people before they can enter bookstores and shopping malls. The First Amendment prohibits such oppressive laws as much in cyberspace as it does in the physical world.”
The lawsuit was filed in US District Court for the Western District of Texas. The Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) members include Apple and Google, which have both said the law would reduce privacy for app users. The companies recently described their plans to comply, saying they would take steps to minimize the privacy risks.
Yet another thing that can make me just a little sad in the morning: Wake up, ate breakfast, get ready for the day, and then discovered that one of the earpiece of the AirPods failed to charge overnight.
Hey Apple: your phone knows when I've stopped playing audio via AirPods. Your phone knows when one of the earpiece is now charging. Your phone knows no audio playing for quite a while, and your AirPods case is now shut, and the other earpiece is missing in action. At least give me a notification?
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When using the AirPods to translate Spanish, I appeared stiff and bumbling at best, terribly rude at worst. The Babel Fish is invisible and instantaneous, not science fiction so much as fantasy. Your throat and tongue and ears, and of course language itself, are of the physical world—unpredictable, fallible, and beautiful for it. Live Translation, in aiming to fix all that messiness in an algorithm streamed through Bluetooth earbuds, is not opening human communication up so much as flattening it.
The latest iPad Pro with the M5 chip marks another milestone in this transition, featuring upgraded technology that allows more users to actually use it as a practical MacBook substitute. At this point, the iPad Pro is thinner, lighter, and more portable than a MacBook Air—and even surpasses it in performance and so many other aspects.
Apple says the new 14-inch MacBook Pro offers up to 2× faster SSD performance than the equivalent previous-generation model, so read and write speeds should get a significant boost.
What we do know for certain is that these new MacBook Pros might not come with an A.C. adapter, but even if someone adds one at checkout, it still costs less in most places with this option.
If you are an Apple One Family or Apple One Premier bundle subscriber, you will be able to add Peacock Premium Plus at a 35% discount compared to its normal price. This is the first benefit of its kind for Apple One members.
Apple’s iPhone Air sold out within minutes of its launch in China on Friday, underscoring the device’s popularity among Chinese consumers despite competition from Android devices.
The strong sales followed CEO Tim Cook’s visit this week to promote the product in the world’s largest smartphone market amid ongoing geopolitical tensions between China and the US.
For now, I've settled down on Unread as my one-and-only RSS reader app.
What I learnt about myself during this search of a RSS reader app replacement exercise is that I am more comfortable with a traditional app which have read/unread status for every single article. I am simply not comfortable with a single-timeline social-media-like reader where things just, well, flow.
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Apple services chief Eddy Cue said the iPhone maker would like to buy more sports rights, but the company would need to be able to do something "unique and special" with the broadcast.
"We don't have to do sports the way that they are. There's plenty of people doing that," Cue told CNBC's Alex Sherman at the Autosport Business Exchange NYC.
Not only does this make me think that Apple’s F1 rights will include everything currently provided by both ESPN and the F1 TV streaming product, but it makes me think that this is a testing ground for Apple to perfect its coverage of F1 in the United States and then begin buying up rights to the sport in additional countries around the world, with the possibility that eventually it’ll own F1 everywhere.
Apple today updated its iMessage troubleshooting support document to add a scenario that can occur in iOS 26. If you don't activate iMessage or an eSIM when setting up a new iPhone with iOS 26, it can prevent iMessage from working.
The absence of the Vision Pro from Apple's trade-in program is therefore peculiar, but likely reflects an unwillingness on the behalf of trade-in partners to accept it for now.
In my testing, I’ve found Kagi News to be impressive if a bit fallible. I’m a fan of how each summary is peppered with citations; hovering over a citation with your mouse will bring up a box with links to original sources. However, sometimes the AI summaries may not totally match up with headlines.
I can’t think of another time when I’d want an app to deliver notifications just slightly late, but in this instance, it’s perfect. I still get the updates I want, but they don’t ruin the fun of listening to the action live (or close to live, I guess).
Apple would be perfectly free to simply ask people, “Would you like a charger with that?” (shades of McDonalds …) and if they said yes, to throw it in free of charge. The fact that the company charges for those who do want one is a commercial decision by Apple, not a requirement of the law.
I do hope Apple buy some rights of sports that, a) I am interested in watching, and b) I am able to watch from where I am, which is not US.
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Apple has officially announced the new 14-inch MacBook Pro powered by the M5 chip. The company touts that this delivers the “next big leap in AI for the Mac,” with up to 3.5x faster AI performance than M4.
The new 14-inch MacBook Pro with an M5 chip does not include a charger in the box in European countries, including the U.K., Ireland, Germany, Italy, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Norway, and others, according to Apple's online store.
Apple today refreshed the iPad Pro with an M5 chip, offering the next generation of Apple Silicon performance in its thinnest tablet form factor. The cellular models are also now powered by the Apple C1X modem.
Apple says that the new M5 chip unlocks important performance gains when compared with the original Apple Vision Pro, with 10% more rendered pixels with the micro-OLED displays, as well as an increased, 120Hz refresh rate, versus up to 100 Hz in the original device. This allows for “crisper details, more fluid display performance, and reduced motion blur.”
Apple Vision Pro is officially being upgraded from the M2 to the new M5, but existing customers don’t need an all-new Vision Pro to enhance the experience. Apple has shared release details for two previously announced accessories. Apple’s new Dual Knit Band that comes with the M5 Apple Vision Pro is also available to purchase separately.
Apple’s new M5 chip features a next-generation 10-core GPU architecture that adds a Neural Accelerator in each core, similar to what we saw with the A19 chip in iPhone 17.
Apple says this enables GPU-based AI workloads to perform at up to 4x the peak performance of last year’s M4 chip.
“It sounds simple,” McCormack says of making an essentially invisible camera experience. “But it often takes an extraordinary amount of innovation. The new Center Stage Camera is no exception… when you ask who works on the camera at Apple, the ripples of the answer go out forever because there are just so many people and so much involved.”
“Just take a minute and think about all the things you can do with the all new Center Stage front camera this year without even thinking about it,” says McCormack. “You can frame yourself solo, frame a group of friends, you can go on a hike or a run while you record yourself, or you can give a walking or biking tour with both you and the environment stable in the frame. And you can do all of this without having to think about the camera settings or even the composition. You’ll get great image quality, authentic skin tones, and excellent stabilization.”
Unfortunately, as a post on a private mailing list alerted me, there’s a bug in iOS 26.0.1 related to the accessory protection controls in Settings > Privacy & Security > Wired Accessories. The bug also affects iPadOS 26. For some iPhones and iPads, including both my iPhone 17 and fourth-generation iPad Air, the accessory connection control is locked to Always Allow, and a note below says, “This setting is managed by your organization and cannot be changed.”
Speaking on The Town podcast, Cue said that no consultants were involved, and that it was a collective decision to drop the “Plus” from the streaming service because everyone was already calling it Apple TV.
The Plus was included in the original name because that’s what Apple uses to distinguish the paid versions of its free services, such as iCloud Plus and News Plus. “We stayed consistent because of it, but we all called it Apple TV, and we said, given where we are today, it’s a great time to do it, so let’s just do it,” said Cue.
Like I said, inertia and context probably solve this problem just fine. But I do like the idea of grabbing the lapels of the Apple TV 4K and yanking it out of the street before it’s run over by Apple’s streaming ambitions.
Apple is significantly expanding its clean energy projects across Europe with new large-scale solar and wind farms now in development in Greece, Italy, Latvia, Poland, and Romania. Together with a newly operational solar array in Spain, the projects announced today — all enabled by Apple — will add 650 megawatts of renewable energy capacity to electrical grids across Europe in the coming years, unlocking more than $600 million in financing. This will generate over 1 million megawatt-hours of clean electricity on behalf of Apple users by 2030.
Alongside today’s news, Apple also announced a new donation program to Tsinghua University aimed at advancing environmental education in China. The company said that the “donation will be used to set up a school-wide program to help students master the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable innovation in order to play a role in their future careers.”
Until now, the Magic Keyboard for iPad Air has only been available in white. From today, Apple is offering a black color option as well.
Today, Apple rolled out an update just in time for users who may already be planning end-of-year get-togethers.
My friend and editor Joe and I were trying to talk. But something on his end continued to produce sound, and he couldn’t tell what it was. After some exploration, he realized that we had started using Slack’s “huddle” feature for a one-to-one audio chat and switched to FaceTime. He hadn’t hung up in Slack, and it was playing goshdarned hold music.
He said, “Shouldn’t there be a way to figure out which app is producing sound?” I said, yes—and then couldn’t immediately determine how. The two of us have approximately 7,500 years of Mac experience between us, so I hope you’ll never feel bad if you can’t solve a problem right away, either.
If Safari is your primary browser, like it is for me, it’s certainly one of the most important apps on the Mac. But did you know you can make it do more? You can with browser extensions.
Fortunately, there is a set of free apps that approximates the functionality of Launchpad. The look isn't quite as nice, and the solution is a tiny bit clunky, but it works. I settled on Launchie because it was both free and distributed through the Mac App Store (and presumably somewhat vetted by Apple), but there are other options that show promise as well.
“Fortunately, through the show, I get to [experience destinations] through the people that I'm meeting, and I've really discovered that the best way to learn about a culture in a country is through the people itself, and that's been a big plus.”
He’s not wrong—many travelers watching the series will be as impressed as Eugene is by the beautiful sites, history and architecture featured. But what makes this show special is the people Eugene meets—they sense his hesitancy, and try to show him a fraction of their existence. Watching him talk to them and begin to understand how their cultures and lifestyles work is a greater insight into each destination than any of the adventures or activities he undertakes.
“I agree with everything that she said,” Doman tells me now. “We are in a period as a society of dislocation and polarization. The thing that provides complexity is art. Art is the thing that can endure when our truth is being skewed and language is controlled and censored.” Like his costar, Doman doesn’t believe in taking The Savant off air entirely. “In censoring art and our show in particular in this moment, we are robbing people of seeing more complexity.” He takes a beat. “That’s the thing that is missing in our society. What censorship does is it seeks to erase that complexity.”
Apple will increase investment in China, the company's Chief Executive Tim Cook said during a meeting with the country's industry minister in Beijing on Wednesday, according to an official summary of their exchange.
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"The business community has always been a stabiliser of China-U.S. relations and a promoter of pragmatic cooperation," China's ambassador to the U.S., Xie Feng, said during an event in Washington on Tuesday.
Many U.S. companies have "chosen China" and are benefiting both countries, Xie added.
Apple is lobbying India's government to modify its income tax law to ensure the company is not taxed for ownership of high-end iPhone machinery it provides to its contract manufacturers, an issue seen as a hurdle to its future expansion, sources say.
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Experts say Apple potentially faces billions of dollars in additional taxes if it changes its business practices without convincing New Delhi to change a 1961 law covering foreign ownership of equipment used in India.
In China, Apple procures the machines used to make iPhones and gives them to its contract manufacturers, and is not subject to tax even though it still owns them.
The continuing annual release of new M-series chips reminds me of… well… number of years since Covid.
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Apple has rebranded its six-year-old streaming service Apple TV+ to Apple TV — which is the same name as its connected smart TV device product and app.
The tech company quietly revealed the news Monday in a press release announcing the streaming debut for its “F1: The Movie,” stating: “Apple TV+ is now simply Apple TV, with a vibrant new identity.”
The new name could be a prelude to larger changes, either with the physical Apple TV device, or for Apple TV+. There has been speculation in the advertising world in recent months that Apple could follow Netflix and others in offering an ad-based tier both to improve the profitability, and to provide options for consumers.
Yes, this is all quite grating for nerds—what a polluted namespace!—but most people are much less focused on these details and it all burs together into Apple TV-ness. Sure, you’ll still need to ask clarifying questions about what someone is referring to when it isn’t obvious from context, but it mostly is obvious.
The Apple TV app just got a refreshed icon with iOS 26 and Apple’s Liquid Glass redesign. Starting with iOS 26.1, Apple is adding a splash of color to the icon as well.
Fun fact (for this story): Apple TV+ actually beat Disney+ to market by 11 days, but the Disney+ name was revealed four months prior to Apple’s own announcement. ESPN+ happened before those things, but that streamer didn’t reach the mainstream. Hulu Plus in 2010 is the granddaddy of them all, though it went with phonetics over mathematics.
Hopping aboard the “plus” train were BET+ (September 2019), AMC+ (June 2020), Discovery+ (January 2021) and Paramount+ (March 2021). Each of those are still clinging to their plus signs — for now.
It turns out Apple TV isn’t the only new icon in today’s 26.1 beta 3 OS releases. Remember the controversial hard drive icon in macOS Tahoe from over the summer? Apple shipped the design, but it looks like a new version is coming after all.
The iPhone Air will be available for pre-order in China this Friday, Apple CEO Tim Cook today said on Weibo during a visit to the country.
The broad outlines of Scorsese's biography and career are well-known, from his Catholic childhood as an asthmatic movie-loving little boy in New York's Little Italy to films as different as Mean Streets (1973) and Killers of the Flower Moon (2023). But throughout five beautifully constructed episodes, Mr Scorsese plays like one reflective, often witty conversation.
Fastmail users can now access their email inboxes, calendars, and contacts directly from the desktop.
Renowned street and portrait photographer Alan Schaller has created a new social media app called Irys, designed to create a calmer, ad-free alternative to algorithm-driven, engagement-focused photo sharing apps like Instagram. According to the developers, Irys intends to bring the focus back to photography rather than obsessing about metrics such as likes and follower counts.
Daft Music is a very particular take on Apple Music. Apple’s app has more features, addressing a wider audience of users, but for simple playback focused on artists, albums, songs, and playlists, Daft Music is an excellent choice.
We had a good run, Launchpad. Why did it have to end?
Satellites beam data down to the Earth all around us, all the time. So you might expect that those space-based radio communications would be encrypted to prevent any snoop with a satellite dish from accessing the torrent of secret information constantly raining from the sky. You would, to a surprising and troubling degree, be wrong.
Roughly half of geostationary satellite signals, many carrying sensitive consumer, corporate, and government communications, have been left entirely vulnerable to eavesdropping, a team of researchers at UC San Diego and the University of Maryland revealed today in a study that will likely resonate across the cybersecurity industry, telecom firms, and inside military and intelligence agencies worldwide.
In an alternate universe where Apple is more evil in naming things, the Apple TV (device) will now also be rebranded as Apple TV Plus. Where the 'Plus' means you can watch shows from Apple TV (service), plus shows from iTunes and other services.
Thank goodness we don't live in that universe… I hope.
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We spoke to Apple’s in-store experts to find out why it thinks its products could be a worthwhile replacement for your current Windows devices.
As a world class, famous filmmaker Martin Scorsese ranks among the most celebrated, most enduring and most prolific. Which leads to the question: What more is there to say?
Plenty, if you look at the dazzling five-hour portrait Rebecca Miller has assembled under the title, “Mr. Scorsese,” which streams Friday on AppleTV+.
The talks come as the global movement against Spotify edges into the mainstream. In January, music journalist Liz Pelly released Mood Machine, a critical history arguing the streaming company has ruined the industry and turned listeners into “passive, uninspired consumers”. Spotify’s model, she writes, depends on paying artists a pittance – less still if they agree to be “playlisted” on its Discovery mode, which rewards the kind of bland, coffee-shop muzak that fades neatly into the background.
Artists have long complained about paltry payouts, but this summer the criticism became personal, targeting Spotify’s billionaire co-founder Daniel Ek for his investment in Helsing, a German firm developing AI for military tech. Groups including Massive Attack, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, Deerhoof and Hotline TNT pulled their music from the service in protest. (Spotify has stressed that “Spotify and Helsing are two separate companies”.)
The part of Liquid Glass that I do enjoy: iPhone lock screen. (After spending quite a bit of time, though, adjusting colors and fonts and sizes and wallpapers.)
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With the release of macOS 26 Tahoe last month, users began noticing a major GPU slowdown issue in popular Electron apps, due to their usage of a particular private API. Now, the Electron team has fixed the issue, and said fix is beginning to roll out in popular third party apps that utilize the framework.
Apple has officially ended two service programs that covered sound issues on the original AirPods Pro and on the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro, removing them from its list of active service programs.
Apple has essentially discontinued Clips, its video-editing app designed to allow users to combine video clips, images, and photos with voice-based titles, music, filters, and graphics to create enhanced videos that can be shared on social media sites.
The app has been removed from the App Store, and a support document on Apple's site says that the app is no longer being updated and would no longer be available for download for new users as of yesterday.
Some days, I still dream of OpenDoc.
Okay, maybe not OpenDoc specifically. But the promise of OpenDoc.
I was trying out various podcast listening apps early this year, and I am now trying out various RSS reading apps. And on both occasions, I have apps that I enjoy in some aspects, but dislike in others. How I wish I can just take different components from different apps, and swish them together to form an app that I will really enjoy using.
And, no, even thought I am very tempted, I don't want to spent the rest of my life developing a podcast listening app and a RSS reading app just for me.
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At the Hexacon offensive security conference in Paris on Friday, Apple vice president of security engineering and architecture Ivan Krstić announced a new maximum payout of $2 million for a chain of software exploits that could be abused for spyware.
[...]
“We are lining up to pay many millions of dollars here, and there’s a reason,” Krstić tells WIRED. “We want to make sure that for the hardest categories, the hardest problems, the things that most closely mirror the kinds of attacks that we see with mercenary spyware—that the researchers who have those skills and abilities and put in that effort and time can get a tremendous reward."
iOS 26 brings Liquid Glass controls laid over noisy backgrounds, jittery animated buttons, shrunken and crowded tab bars, collapsing navigation, and ubiquitous search bars. On top of that, it breaks long‑established iOS conventions, getting closer to Android design.
Overall, Apple is prioritizing spectacle over usability, lending credibility to the theory that Liquid Glass is an attempt to distract customers from iOS 26’s lack of long-promised AI features.
Apple has announced a significant expansion of its Emergency SOS via satellite feature for iPhone and Apple Watch Ultra. The company says the feature will launch to users in Mexico later this year, joining existing availability of Find My via satellite and Messages via satellite in the country.
Apple is in late-stage talks to acquire top talent from computer vision startup Prompt AI, as well as the company’s technology, CNBC has learned.
[...]
Prompt’s flagship app, Seemour, connects to home security cameras, adding sophisticated capabilities. The technology helps cameras detect specific people, pets and other animals or objects around a household, and to send alerts and text-based descriptions of unusual activity or answer questions about what’s been happening in front of the camera.
Apple was hit with a lawsuit in California federal court by a pair of neuroscientists who say that the tech company misused thousands of copyrighted books to train its Apple Intelligence artificial intelligence model.
Susana Martinez-Conde and Stephen Macknik, professors at SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University in Brooklyn, New York, told the court in a proposed class action on Thursday that Apple used illegal "shadow libraries" of pirated books to train Apple Intelligence.
I sure hope we don't have to wait until Sep 2026 to get significant Liquid Glass improvements.
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Thanks for reading.
Apple’s new Liquid Glass interface design brings transparency and blur effects to all Apple operating systems, but many users find it distracting or difficult to read. Here’s how to control its effects and make your interface more usable. Although the relevant Accessibility settings are quite similar across macOS, iOS, watchOS, and tvOS, I separate them because they offer different levels of utility in each.
Apple Podcasts is promoting that shows in its “Series Essentials” are ad-free this month - but publishers aren’t being compensated for the loss of revenue.
One publisher confirmed to Podnews that, in order to be promoted in the app as part of the feature, it was required by Apple to offer the show ad-free. “After the promotional month, we could turn on ads again,” the publisher told us.
Most of us realize that our attention span is shot and our screen time is out of control—that the ability to do anything too often leaves us doing nothing at all. That’s why we create byzantine screen-restriction systems—and hate ourselves when we press “Ignore.”
There is, of course, another solution: We could get rid of our smartphones altogether. But that’s quite a leap when you barely remember life without them.
The Apple Vision Pro is getting new “immersive” content for the upcoming NBA season: a “selection” of live Los Angeles Lakers games that will be available to watch on the headset in the Apple Immersive Video format, Apple announced today. “Vision Pro users will be able to feel the intensity of each game as if they were courtside, with perspectives that are impossible to capture in traditional broadcasts,” Apple says.
After a bunch of very cryptic teasers, Apple has finally revealed a proper look at Pluribus, it’s next big sci-fi series. The show comes from Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan, and stars Rhea Seehorn as Carol, “the most miserable person on Earth” who “must save the world from happiness.”
The Commission has sent requests for information to Snapchat, YouTube, Apple Store and Google Play on how they protect kids on their platforms under the Digital Services Act, the Commission’s Executive Vice President Henna Virkkunen said in Denmark Friday.
Apple Inc. is preparing to expand the roles of some top executives in response to the pending departure of longtime Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams, according to people familiar with the matter.
Services chief Eddy Cue will gain supervision over Apple’s health and fitness teams, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the moves haven’t been announced. Craig Federighi, head of software engineering, will now oversee the Apple Watch operating system, they said.
“I am not in favor of Apple removing ICE-tracking apps from the App Store, nor the app that simply let users archive videos of ICE,” says Riana Pfefferkorn, a policy researcher at Stanford University. “This seems like more needless kowtowing by Tim Cook.” The Apple CEO has appeared at several events with President Donald Trump and reportedly donated $1 million to attend his inauguration.
Legal experts WIRED spoke with say that the ICE monitoring and documentation apps that Apple has removed from its App Store are clear examples of protected speech under the US Constitution’s First Amendment. “These apps are publishing constitutionally protected speech. They're publishing truthful information about matters of public interest that people obtained just by witnessing public events,” says David Greene, a civil liberties director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Is there a RSS client that is meant for 'super-nerds' -- like article filtering, and priority ordering, and color-coding, and all sort of settings?
No?
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Thanks for reading.
Starting next year, Texas will require companies like Apple and Google to verify the ages of people that use their app stores, and Apple shared today how it’s going to comply. Starting January 1st, 2026, anyone trying to make a new Apple Account must confirm if they are over 18, and any users under 18 must join a Family Sharing group. Parents and guardians will also be required to give their consent for users under 18 to download apps or to make in-app purchases.
Developers will also have to make changes to comply with the law. Apple already offers a Declared Age Range API that developers can implement to ask users their general age, and the API “will be updated in the coming months to provide the required age categories for new account users in Texas,” Apple says.
Liquid Glass is the sort of change that takes some getting used to from the perspective of both users and developers. The design language shifted a lot over the course of the summer beta season, which made developers’ lives tougher than in some years. This has resulted in a variety of Liquid Glass implementations across our favorite apps, which is a fascinating study in the range of designs Liquid Glass encompasses.
Today, we wanted to share some of our favorite implementations of Liquid Glass and other features debuted this fall by indie developers. We’ll have more coverage in the weeks ahead, but let’s dive into some of the best OS 26 updates we’ve seen so far.
By the way, there’s nothing inherently wrong with sleep tracking. Used with an understanding of what you’re actually collecting, it can help you notice patterns—like how late-night screens or evening wine affect your rest.
The important thing is recognizing that it’s a tool based on measurements, not necessarily reality. The moment you start deciding how you feel in the morning based on a number on your smartwatch, it’s working against you. It turns out that the secret to sleeping better might be giving up on perfection.
I’m a bit of an AI skeptic–I think it’s vastly overhyped–but even without the hype, it’s easy to see that it will still be a huge part of future tech devices. It’s hard to imagine that more of our interactions with devices won’t be done by voice, leveraging the power of AI software to interpret what we say and do our bidding.
As giants such as OpenAI, Meta and Alibaba plough vast sums into developing increasingly powerful models, middle powers and developing countries are watching the landscape carefully, and sometimes placing their own, expensive bets.
Unlike Low Power Mode, which still exists, Adaptive Power doesn’t turn off important features. Instead, it uses on-device intelligence to learn your recent usage patterns. This helps it predict when you’ll need extra battery power for gaming, capturing photos, or other intensive tasks, so you can enjoy those activities without compromising performance.
Apple today announced that its Hypertension Notifications feature on select Apple Watch models is available in Canada, Singapore, and Bahrain starting today.
Since its first smartwatch in 2015, TAG Heuer had relied on Google's Wear OS, but now it moves to its own, in-house platform. Developed by a team of 60 engineers in Paris, TAG Heuer OS introduces a more refined interface, new animations, and streamlined menus designed for faster navigation using both the touchscreen and mechanical pushers.
The most significant benefit of this transition is enhanced compatibility with Apple devices. The Calibre E5 is officially "Made for iPhone" (MFi) certified, part of Apple's hardware licensing program that ensures accessories and devices meet Apple's connectivity and software standards.
Peakto 2.5 turns the user’s Mac into a secure server, enabling photographers to share their content for collaboration online via an encrypted network connection.
I've put together a list of five possibilities, each of which could serve as a drop-in replacement for Pocket.
The International Emmy-winning French-Japanese drama series will return on Wednesday, January 21, 2026 with a first episode of an eight-ep Season 2.
The streamer has ordered a third season of the series, based on an unfinished Edith Wharton novel, about a group of young American women who head overseas in search of love and adventure. The renewal for The Buccaneers comes two months after the show’s second season wrapped in early August.
Finding homes for my 57+ Lightning cables was easier than I expected. My USB-C transition is complete, but my Lightning legacy lives on in my cars, drawers, and homes of friends and family. It feels good knowing these cables are still useful, rather than sitting in a landfill.
In an appeal to the app removal, Mark told Apple “the posts on this app are significantly delayed and subject to manual review, meaning the officers will be long gone from the location by the time the content is posted to be viewed by the public. This would make it impossible for our app to be used to harm such officers individually or as a group.”
[...]
Apple then replied and said the ban remains in place, according to another email Mark shared.
I still have a bunch of Lightning cables, and I still have a bunch of devices that charge with Lightning.
The last charging cable that went obsolete in my household is the old iPod 30-pin connector. (The last cable that went obsolete in my household is the USB-A connector, but I cannot remember ever using that to charge anything.)
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Thanks for reading.
Though it was not publicized, a collection of ten Think different posters was sent to hundreds of schools in Apple’s Education Channels. The intent was to stimulate conversation about these people and their accomplishments. Jane’s poster was part of this set. Literally fifteen years later, I saw these posters still hanging in my son’s high school library. A teacher raved to me how useful they had been. Pretty amazing.
Today, the iPhone Air feels like no other iPhone ever made. It’s just so appealing. But it’s got so many qualities that are simply disqualifying for so many use cases. If it were the only iPhone Apple sold, it would be a disaster. But it’s one of five new iPhones introduced in 2025, so it can afford to be what it is and see if it can find an audience.
It is not a phone you can charge in the morning and wholly trust to last the whole day without any extra battery support. But if aesthetics or portability matter to you more than all-day battery life or a multi-lens camera system, the iPhone Air delivers.
Apple plans to hold a "Mindful Month" Apple Watch Activity Challenge on Friday, October 10. Mindful Month brings awareness to mental health, self care, meditation, and mindfulness.
Apple appears to have implemented a server-side fix for an issue that prevented a limited number of iPhone 17, iPhone Air, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone 17 Pro Max users from downloading on-device Apple Intelligence models.
Football Manager 26 Touch will be available on Apple Arcade starting Tuesday, November 4. The latest version of the soccer manager game features improved graphics, official Premier League licensing, and women's soccer.
In the aftermath of the iPhone 17 launch, there was a bit of a ‘scratchgate’ controversy as customers noticed iPhone 17 and iPhone Air demo units in stores were already showing noticeable signs of wear on their backs. Apple investigated and commented that these marks were caused by material transfer from older MagSafe chargers being used to display the phones on the Apple Store tables.
At the time, the company said it was working to address the issue in stores. We may now be seeing the solution; Consomac spotted new MagSafe chargers in use at the Apple Store that include an outer silicone ring.
Apple already announced plans in June to change its App Store policies following the EU’s investigation into whether the iPhone maker’s rules prevented app developers from sending consumers to offers outside its platform.
[...]
The commission is also discussing potential changes with Apple in relation to another investigation into the iPhone maker on its new contractual terms for developers.
Overall, a slightly dumber life just feels better to me.
Nowadays, I regularly uses two podcast clients on my iPhone. You can call them day podcasts and night podcasts. They serve different purposes for my listening entertainment; one is for regular listening, and the other for falling-asleep listening.
Getting a podcast client with support for multiple playlists reduces the number of apps I use, but increases the amount of fiddling I have to do. So I didn't go down that route.
On the other hand, after trying out for a few days, I discovered I cannot stand having two RSS clients on my iPhone.
:-)
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Thanks for reading.
But there’s an important point to make here: controls are not tools. Controls allow you to adjust settings—changing channels, selecting colors, pausing playback, and more. Tools enable you to create, modify, delete, or give a performance. It’s the difference between a volume knob and a violin.
[...]
So, no, I don’t want tools that “give way to content” or “shrink to bring focus to the content.” When I’m cooking, I want my knives, spatulas, measuring spoons, and the like exactly where they belong, so they’re instantly at hand. My Mac is set up in much the same way, with every app appearing exactly where I expect and, for the most part, providing an interface that looks and works as I want.
A new Apple short film called The Underdogs: Blue Screen of Death has been posted to the company’s YouTube channel as part of an occasional series that was first launched back in 2019.
Eight minutes long, it’s a gentle comedy that highlights the built-in security features of Macs while also showing off a whole range of the company’s ecosystem features.
When Slide Over is invoked, the current window will be resized and stuck in the corner. You can grab the top of it and slide it off-screen, and it’ll vanish—only to reappear when you swipe your finger from off the side of the screen back on.
Now in iOS 26.1 beta 2, Apple has replaced the ‘Stop’ button with a new sliding gesture that requires a little more intentionality. This should make accidental alarm dismissals more rare.
The main downgrade for me is that for the first time in literally the entire history of Apple making earbuds, I lost the ear lottery this time, and these simply do not feel good in my ears. To be clear, they stay in there quite nicely, even over several hours, but if I wear them for more than 30 minutes, they become actively painful. I've tried every single tip size that comes in the box, and all of them have this issue.
I hold out some hope that the third-party market will come out with some custom ear tips that work for me, but those don't really seem to exist yet in any meaningful way, so I haven't found a good fit yet. I'm past my return window, so I'm hoping these come, but as of right now, I only wear these for short walks or runs, and anything longer like travel, working from home, or doing yard work, I'm sticking with the older model.
Ok, hotshot, here’s a test. You’ve got a Mac with a keyboard. There’s no USB mouse to hand within a 500-mile radius. You have an unpaired Bluetooth mouse. Whatcha gonna do, punk? You got any bright ideas?
Simply install the app and then click on any folder or archive file, press the spacebar and you can immediately see what’s inside it – including the contents of subfolders. That’s it: nothing more, nothing less.
Whether you’re looking for a brilliant Pocket substitute or are new to the read-it-later game, these iOS apps will serve your reading needs well.
The apps below were chosen for a few reasons. First, I picked ones that make flashcard generation easy. Second, I selected ones that, to some extent or another, rely on the Leitner method and give you the option to indicate whether you got a card right or wrong.
If Ben Stiller had directed this documentary like a man who had had uncertainties and found smug validation by going through his parents’ stuff, it would have just evaporated into the ether. Instead, his exercise reminds him that, however famously polished his parents were, however impressive the duration of their marriage, it’s worth remembering the effort and imperfections and inconsistencies as well, so that nothing is lost.
The situation has already spawned an entire predatory industry of digital snake-oil merchants peddling A.I.-powered remedies—new toolkits that will crawl the internet for job postings, then apply to hundreds of jobs on your behalf with custom-generated cover letters and keyword-optimized résumés. Again, the false promise is that A.I. can fix the mess it has created by generating even more clutter.
I’ve applied to more than 100 jobs in the past four months. I’ve been rejected by roughly half, and ghosted by the rest—all without making human contact. Recently, I’ve had several promising interviews and a few leads, but that’s thanks entirely to old-fashioned networking and referrals. Nothing has come from months of sending my applications into the gaping maw of a broken ATS.
I am, again, testing out a whole bunch of apps right now. This time round: RSS clients.
And, once again, I am so tempted to just spend all the time writing one for myself.
(No, I really don't want to do that.)
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Thanks for reading.
For years, my quest for the perfect outliner has led me through a variety of dedicated applications, from minimalist options like Bike to the comprehensive and complex Org Mode. I was in search of an ideal combination of simplicity, power, and a seamless user experience. To my surprise, the solution was not a new purchase but a pre-installed application I had overlooked: Apple Notes. With recent updates, it has transformed into a remarkably capable outliner that not only fulfills but often surpasses my needs, establishing itself as my new favorite for structuring thoughts and projects.
A great outliner must excel at a few fundamental tasks. It needs to offer a clear hierarchical structure, enable effortless manipulation of that structure, and maintain an unobtrusive presence. Apple Notes now masters these core requirements.
With these enhanced boarding passes, users can track their flight with a live activity, easily see a map of the airport, and track their checked luggage in the Find My app.
There were a number of airlines that promised to support this feature, and United appears to be the first one.
The Paris prosecutor's office said on Monday it was investigating Siri, Apple's voice assistant, after it received a complaint.
For those who celebrates, happy Mid-Autumn Festival. May you have a good harvest. (And may all the other important stuff be better in coming years for everyone.)
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Thanks for reading.
A world where everything is on the web and nothing is on the machines that we own is a sad world where we’ve lost a core freedom.
I want to preserve that freedom. I like making apps that show the value of that freedom.
[...]
Apple keeps doing things that make us all feel sick. Removing ICEBlock is just the latest and it won’t be the last. So I am sympathetic to the idea of making web apps, and my brain goes there more often. And if I could solve the problems of money and of protecting users, I’d be way more inclined.
Editing is really nice and fluid. You can effortlessly zoom in and out of your project, select a clip, trim it, move it around, the works. I did mention when the app was announced, that it felt a lot more like Apple’s Final Cut Pro (FCP) than Adobe’s desktop Premiere Pro. The clips’ rounded look for one.
But it's effective as a movie about fire itself, about its fierceness. It's effective as a story about what a nightmare it is to traverse narrow little mountain roads with fire trucks (or school buses), and about the moments when the people responsible for fighting fires realize they have to surrender a particular area as lost and just try to evacuate as many people as they can. It shows some of the tension between the people responding to the fire and the representatives of Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), whose transmission lines started the fire, as the company later acknowledged.
Again, though, what’s missing in Mr. Scorsese stands out because so much is present, and present in such solidly rendered ways.
One day, Apple may be able to make that singular, gorgeous XR headset that people actually want to wear. But until then, it has to meet the market where it is headed—and that is in cheaper, lighter, more functional frames.
If I suddenly come across a sum of money that I can use to buy anything over at Apple, I may consider a nice watch just to read time. I may consider retiring my Intel Mac mini with a new replacement. Or a new iPad -- I don't need an iPad -- to replace my TV-watching game-playing no-more-OS-update iPad Pro.
But I will never even consider buying the current Vision Pro.
(Or the iCar, if it exists.)
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Thanks for reading.
But instant translation could do more than help individuals by immersing them in new cultures and kickstarting conversations. It could rewire whole sectors of economies by pushing people beyond familiar chains and tourist traps, funnelling income to small local vendors whose English is imperfect.
[...]
Just as calculators reshaped our approach to maths, AI translation could dent our motivation to speak other tongues. As such, challenging times may lie ahead for companies who offer language courses.
Less than 24 hours after releasing the two versions of her new album, all songs from The Life of a Showgirl are now topping Apple Music’s Top Songs chart in the US.
This week, the morning after he was invested with a knighthood by the Prince of Wales for services to drama on stage and screen, the Oscar-winning actor said Lamb is one of his all-time favorite roles.
“Where would he be in the canon, as it were? I think up there with you know, ‘Darkest Hour,’ ‘Tinker Tailor,’” he said.
Today, Apple debuted Maine, Elevated’s second episode, with an equally stunning set of aerial shots “above the Pine Tree State’s stunning autumn landscape.”
Maybe my battery was particularly puny, or maybe it's me. But I'm not the only one to feel that sacrificing 20% of my battery capacity in exchange for the promise of better battery life isn't worth it. And I'm not the only one.
There’s nothing particularly standout about it – I suppose that might partly explain the lower price point – but it’s still packed full of features, including reacting to sound, screen mirroring and extensive customizable light scenes. There's even AI-enabled customizations here – just type a word and the app will spew out an appropriate light color palette.
While some advocates don’t find all of these apps particularly useful — pointing to potential misinformation and false alarms — they echoed criticism of moves to suppress them.
“What really worries me is the kind of precedent that this sets” where the government can “basically dictate what kinds of apps people have on their phones,” said civil rights attorney Alejandra Caraballo, who works at Harvard University’s Cyberlaw Clinic.
It’s rather chilling to consider what Apple would have done if the Trump administration had “demanded” a list of device IDs and user identities for everyone who had installed ICEBlock. Or what Apple will do if such a demand pops into one of their dimwitted but cruel minds.
Just like Sheldon needed someone to translate Sarcasm, I need my AirPods' Apple Intelligence to translate emotions and (hidden) agenda in conversations.
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Thanks for reading.
Look, if I need someplace to get distracted watching classic Star Trek episodes on a tiny television while sitting on the beach, well, you have my number, Vision Pro. Just don’t ask me to fill out that spreadsheet. Despite its ambition and how much it can do, the Vision Pro still feels like it has a way to go when it comes to the fine art of getting work done.
According to Apple, some customers might not be able to activate iMessage with a phone number if there is an inactive SIM or eSIM with the same phone number as an active SIM on the iPhone.
Rather than allow different companies to interpret the meaning of carbon neutrality differently, EU regulators simply took a hardline approach and chose to prevent any company from mentioning it.
In preparation of this, Apple has opted to switch up its environmental marketing worldwide. This is why the individual products like Watches and Macs are no longer advertised as “carbon neutral”.
The tech giant told the BBC it had removed ICEBlock from its App Store after law enforcement made it aware of "safety risks" associated with it and "similar apps".
[...]
But its creator, Joshua Aaron, denied it posed a threat.
"ICEBlock is no different from crowd sourcing speed traps, which every notable mapping application, including Apple's own Maps app," he said.
When we look back from the future, will Vision Pro be iPad of the early years, or Newton of all it's years?
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Thanks for reading.
Today, Apple TV+ announced a five-year extension as the exclusive streaming home for all things Peanuts, through an expanded partnership with WildBrain, Peanuts Worldwide and Lee Mendelson Film Productions until 2030. The new deal includes the classic Peanuts library, as well as plans for more new original Peanuts series and specials. Apple has been home to the Peanuts classic library since 2020, alongside multiple original programming collaborations starting in 2018, and is currently in production with WildBrain and Peanuts on a brand-new animated feature film starring Snoopy, Charlie Brown and the Peanuts gang, announced in 2023.
The UK government has issued a new order to Apple to create a backdoor into its cloud storage service, this time targeting only British users’ data, despite US claims that Britain had abandoned all attempts to break the tech giant’s encryption.
The UK Home Office demanded in early September that Apple create a means to allow officials access to encrypted cloud backups, but stipulated that the order applied only to British citizens’ data, according to people briefed on the matter.
Apple Inc. has hit pause on a planned overhaul to its Vision Pro headset to redirect resources toward a more urgent effort: developing smart glasses that can rival products from Meta Platforms Inc.
The company had been preparing a cheaper, lighter variant of its headset — code-named N100 — for release in 2027. But Apple announced internally last week that it’s moving staff from that project to accelerate work on glasses, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
Given the pace of development we’re now seeing in smart glasses products, I wonder whether there will even be a role for a new headset by 2028. If smart glasses, clunky or not, are fulfilling most of the needs for this type of device, then a large headset could easily look anachronistic by then.
Connectivity glitches aside, the entire process worked remarkably well. The next time I’m recording video of an in-person event, I’ll be sure to bring an old iPhone or two and possibly invest in more iPhone tripods.
Since the first version of the AirPods launched, they've included a battery that is sealed shut with glue, and that hasn't changed with the AirPods Pro 3. iFixit says battery replacements are so difficult that many repair shops won't even attempt to do it. The AirPods Pro Charging Case has the same glued-in battery.
A group of ex-Apple employees who co-created SwiftUI has launched a vibe coding iPhone app that takes voice or text input, writes SwiftUI apps in seconds, and even lets you distribute them through TestFlight.
Back in the 17th century, René Descartes famously decided that the only thing he could ultimately be certain of was his own mind. “Cogito, ergo sum”—“I think, therefore I am.” He argued that human beings are lonely islands in an unfeeling cosmos, that all other animals are automata, lacking souls and emotion. “It is nature which acts in them according to the disposition of their organs,” he wrote in 1637, “just as a clock, which is composed of wheels and weights is able to tell the hours and measure the time more correctly than we can do in all our wisdom.”
Perhaps his conclusion that nothing beyond humans could possibly be conscious is ethically questionable. But today, AI risks luring us into a very different kind of trap: seeing minds where, in the end, there’s only clockwork.
I am still waiting for the Peanuts lock screen on my iPhone.
:-)
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Thanks for reading.
One of the key design features of the Beats Fit Pro was its in-ear wingtip designed to help keep each bud firmly in the ear during workouts and other activities. The Powerbeats Fit deliver a redesigned wingtip that's 20% more flexible than on Beats Fit Pro, helping it to fit more securely into a wider variety of ears. And with four ear tip sizes ranging from extra small to large, Powerbeats Fit should offer comfort for most sizes and shapes of ear canals.
Based on the Geekbench 6 benchmark result shown in the video, the M5 chip offers up to 12% faster multi-core CPU performance compared to the M4 chip in the iPad Pro.
With just model numbers, there are few specifications that can be gleaned from the FCC's leak, but it does confirm Apple's work on new devices. It also potentially gives us some insight into a launch timeline, as these kinds of documents are typically filed in the weeks ahead of a product's debut. We do know that the new M5 iPad Pro models appear to support Wi-Fi 7, while the M5 MacBook Pro model listed does not.
One of several documents the FCC shared today references an Apple-designed "Head Mounted Device" with a model number of A3416. An included image confirms the device is a Vision Pro.
The FCC's uploads are transmission tests, SAR test reports, and WLAN test reports, so there's not a lot of additional product information available.
Health Canada has officially approved Apple’s Hypertension Notifications feature for the Apple Watch, adding Canada to the growing list of countries where the health tool can launch.
If you are an AirPods user and have always wanted to have better Active Noise Cancellation, then you are the number one candidate to upgrade to the AirPods Pro 3 because the new ANC is by far the product's standout feature.
Adobe today launched Premiere for iPhone and iPad, bringing its flagship video editing software to mobile devices for the first time.
[...]
The iPhone and iPad Premiere app can be used without a subscription. Optional features, including generative AI credits and additional cloud storage via Adobe Creative Cloud, are available for an additional fee.
It comes down to high computational performance with low energy consumption. Seven words that define both Apple’s ecosystem and the needs of modern business at this stage of the ever-accelerating digital transformation.
A federal judge on Tuesday denied Apple Google and Meta Platforms' requests to dismiss lawsuits claiming they promoted illegal gambling by hosting and accepting commissions from casino-style apps that addict users.
[...]
In a 37-page decision, Davila found that Apple, Google and Meta did not act as "publishers" when processing payments, undercutting their Section 230 immunity claims.
Apple Inc. says it did nothing wrong in choosing to partner with OpenAI — rather than Elon Musk’s xAI — when it added generative artificial intelligence to its iPhone operating system.
Apple’s lawyers said in a court filing Tuesday that even if the company teamed up with OpenAI first, it is “widely known that Apple intends to partner with other generative AI chatbots” in the future.
Okay, I give up. After wrestling with the wallpaper and menu bar on my Mac for the past week, I've gone into the Accessibility settings and turn off transparency.
There are two conflicting requirements from me: firstly, I don't want my menu bar to be in a dark color. The rest of my screen is going to be mostly white -- whether it's Xcode or BBEdit or some other apps -- and a dark menu bar will just draw my attention away from the stuff that matters.
Secondly, all the wallpapers that I like are dark color. And if I use a dark-colored wallpaper, the menu bar will be dark.
I could force myself to use a light-colored wallpaper that I don't like. Or I can just use a light color -- there's silver and there's space-grey in the wallpaper settings.
But after a while, I realize I need to enjoy using the Mac.
And so, that's the end of Liquid Glass on my Mac.
Until the next year.
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Thanks for reading.