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- Monday February 24
- 12:01 pmApple made this change to avoid appearing to approve iPhone porn apps
A technicality had previously given the impression that Apple approved of a porn app being made available to iPhone users in the EU via a third-party app store. That lead to some misleading headlines, but Apple has now solved the problem by changing three words in the email sent to developers … more…11:51 amApple pledges record-breaking $500 billion investment in the US
Apple plans to invest $500 billion in the US with its suppliers over the next four years while creating 20,000 new jobs. (via Cult of Mac - Apple news, rumors, reviews and how-tos)11:42 amApple Announces $500 Billion US Investment Plan, To Hire 20,000 People
Apple said it planned to hire an additional 20,000 staff in the US over the next four years as part of a $500 billion American investment plan. Financial Times: The $500 billion figure [non-paywalled source], spread over Trump's second term in office, includes regular spending on thousands of US suppliers, data centres and corporate facilities, as well as new initiatives such as an academy in Michigan "to train the next generation of US manufacturers." Apple will also open a manufacturing facility in Houston to build servers that can support its artificial intelligence ambitions. Read more of this story at Slashdot.11:30 amiPhone 17 range revealed in image backed by multiple leakers
A new image purporting to show CAD renders of all iPhone 17 models has been leaked by one often unreliable leaker, but also now backed by many sources.Purported CAD renders showing the camera layout of all iPhone 17 modelsFollowing the leaked renders claiming to be of an iPhone 17 Pro Max in a MagSafe case, a new single image of the entire iPhone 17 lineup has now appeared. The image, said to be from CAD renders, fits with previous rumors concerning the camera systems on every model including the expected slim iPhone 17.iPhone 17 Lineup CAD pic.twitter.com/xednTkpJnq— Majin Bu (@MajinBuOfficial) February 23, 2025 Rumor Score: 🤔 Possible Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums11:24 amApple published a new Press Release
Apple just published a new Press Release:Apple will spend more than $500 billion in the U.S. over the next four years11:15 amOppo’s new folding phone transforms into a teeny-tiny MacBook
Macworld The Apple ecosystem enables a lot of great interactions, but there’s one thing we can’t do—access our Macs on our iPads and iPhones. We can share files, sync email, and share photos, but we can’t just log into a virtual version of our Mac on our other devices. If you buy one of Oppo’s new Find N5 foldable phones, however, you’ll be able to do just that. Using Oppo’s O+ Connect for iOS and macOS, you can work remotely on your Mac no matter where you are. You can use it full screen on your phone like a tablet or fold it in half to bring up a keyboard and use it like a miniature laptop. According to The Verge, the software includes multi-touch gestures as well as a “clunky” mouse cursor and “some buttons that recreate common keyboard shortcuts.” Not a perfect experience, perhaps. But if you’ve ever wanted to access your Mac’s desktop on your phone while on the road, this is the first and only way to do it. The image above of someone using a ridiculously small keyboard as if it were a MacBook is a little outlandish, but the idea is still intriguing. Apple introduced a similar feature in reverse with macOS 15 last fall with iPhone Mirroring. Instead of accessing their Mac on an iPhone, users can access their iPhone’s screen on their Mac when both are connected to the same network. It’s not hard to imagine it expanding to remote access in macOS 16, nor is it unrealistic to think Apple could make a similar system for accessing your Mac on an iPad Pro. With persistent rumors that Apple is working on a foldable device, this is a feature that Mac users would absolutely love. With Apple unlikely to ever add touch support to the MacBook, the ability to run a virtualization of their Mac desktop on their iPhone is an appealing alternative. But if you don’t want to wait until 2027, go grab yourself a Find N5 and try it out right now.11:09 amAs Trump tariffs loom, Apple pledges more than $500bn in US investment, new Texas factory | 9 to 5 MacAs Trump tariffs loom, Apple pledges more than $500bn in US investment, new Texas factory
Apple has today announced that it is committed to invest more than $500 billion in the United States over the next four years, including 20,000 U.S. jobs and a new factory in Houston, Texas. The $500 billion headline figure is not all new, with much of what is promised in the announcement having been pledged before. The news is clearly aimed at satiating the Trump administration, with Apple perhaps hoping it will be enough to get tariff exemptions on its products. more…10:32 amYou can now use AirPods Pro as hearing aids in the UK
As previously reported in January, the can now be used as hearing aids in the United Kingdom, having now received government approval for over-the-counter hearing aid devices. AirPods Pro 2 can address mild to moderate hearing loss. With an iPhone and AirPods Pro, users can perform a hearing test, and apply their hearing profile to their earbuds for continuous hearing correction. This functionality is all available as a free software update. more…10:30 amThank you, Home button, for leading me through a scary future
Macworld This may be shocking to hear from someone who would later edit a magazine called iPad and iPhone User, but I was the last of my friends to get a mobile phone. In the end, I only agreed to buy one because I lost a bet. Partly this can be explained by stubbornness, but another factor was that smartphones arrived slightly too late for me. By the time they took off in the U.K., I was a prematurely middle-aged 20-something, already beginning to lose the fearlessness you see when kids pick up touchscreen devices for the first time, which I had when 16-bit game consoles arrived a decade earlier. Children play with tech happily and recklessly, but I was worried I’d buy the wrong model, or use it wrong and break it. I was just a bit scared to commit. And I wasn’t alone. It happened early for me, but most of us, at some point, started to find new technology intimidating. We’ve all seen older relatives jabbing nervously at touchscreens in expectation of disaster, bamboozled by tiny keyboards, or refusing to stray outside the two or three drop-down menus they know are a safe way to access email or the internet. Technology is not a fun experience when it makes you feel uncomfortable or unsafe. Apple’s great success was to understand this fear and find a way to soothe it. We talk about the intuitive design of the iPhone and the iPad, the way things do what you expect and the processes are simple and easy to understand. But these are welcoming devices in ways that go well beyond the software interface. Apple’s engineers worked hard to make the first iPhones and iPad something you would want to pick up, a reassuring object that invited interaction, not awe. And while the creed of control minimalism would later risk turning into a mania, at heart it was about having a small number of buttons so you could easily tell which one did what. The most important element of all was the Home button, perfectly sized and shaped for your thumb and nestled at the bottom of the display. Wherever you were, whatever you were doing, you had only to press the Home button and you’d be whisked back to the safety and familiarity of the Home screen. This was the press-in-case-of-emergency button for early iPhone and iPad owners, the safety belt, the parachute, and the get-out-of-jail-free card. It was Don Draper’s carousel. It was Dorothy’s ruby slippers, clicked together three times. There really was no place like Home. I don’t think it’s possible to overstate the importance of the Home button in the early success of the iPhone and iPad. Tech heads, early adopters, and the wealthy young were always ripe to be recruited when the smartphone revolution began, but the intuitive friendliness of Apple’s devices enabled them to access the markets beyond—older users, busy or stressed users, users with disabilities, inexperienced and nervous users who never would have thought technology was for them. People, in other words, like me. It’s been 18 years since the first Home button arrived with the first iPhone, but the time has come to say goodbye. Apple’s been working on the transition for nearly half of that time, since 2017’s iPhone X heralded a future based around Face ID and full-body screens, and it finally ended an era last week with the launch of the iPhone 16e and the discontinuation of the final iPhone SE. There are now, for the first time since 2007, zero products in the Apple Store with a Home button. We’re going to have to learn to live without it. And I think that’s okay. The Home button was important, but it brought problems of its own. For one thing, it took up precious room on the front of your device; I’d have trouble now swapping my iPhone 16 Plus for a screen the size of the SE’s. And it used to go wrong a lot. When I started at Macworld we had an article explaining what to do if your Home button stopped working and it regularly used to get more traffic than anything else. More importantly, I think society is ready to move on. These days far fewer people, I suspect, would describe themselves as total beginners when it comes to technology. My parents’ generation all have smartphones and most of them seem to own a tablet too; they’re comfortable with the gestures used to operate a touchscreen device. And some guy who used to be terrified of owning a mobile phone now writes about them for a living. We’re ready to manage without the crutch of a Home button, and a lot of the credit for that goes to Apple. Foundry Welcome to our weekly Apple Breakfast column, which includes all the Apple news you missed last week in a handy bite-sized roundup. We call it Apple Breakfast because we think it goes great with a Monday morning cup of coffee or tea, but it’s cool if you want to give it a read during lunch or dinner hours too. Trending: Top stories iPhone 16e: The ‘e’ means everything. Or, as a counterpoint: the iPhone 16e is disappointing, and it’s all Apple Intelligence’s fault. $699?! Why I can’t recommend the iPhone 15 to a single type of customer. Apple’s political turn is leading it down a sketchy road. Deciding when to buy a Mac is about to get a lot easier. Could Apple take on Nvidia with a standalone graphics card? Someone hacked a Windows Phone to ‘run’ iOS. Podcast of the week There’s a new iPhone in town! Apple has released the iPhone 16e and we have all the details on the latest episode of the Macworld Podcast! You can catch every episode of the Macworld Podcast on Spotify, Soundcloud, the Podcasts app, or our own site. Reviews corner Hades 2 review: Now with native support for M-series Macs. Creative Aurvana Ace Mimi review: Good sound, many weaknesses. Logitech MX Creative Console review: Dream toolkit for creatives. Alogic Edge 34″ and 40″ Ultrawide QHD Monitor review: One monitor to match two. Got Bag Pro Pack review: Sustainability meets functionality. Software updates, bugs, and problems Get ready to be annoyed: Apple wants to put ads in Maps. No Camera Control? No problem, your iPhone 15 Pro will soon get Visual Intelligence. iOS 18.4 set for ‘early April’ release after a lengthy beta delay. And with that, we’re done for this week’s Apple Breakfast. If you’d like to get regular roundups, sign up for our newsletters, including our new email from The Macalope–an irreverent, humorous take on the latest news and rumors from a half-man, half-mythical Mac beast. You can also follow us on Facebook, Threads, Bluesky, or X for discussion of breaking Apple news stories. See you next Monday, and stay Appley.10:00 amGeekbench specs confirm 8GB of RAM, other details for the iPhone 16e
The first benchmarks have surfaced for Apple’s recently-announced iPhone 16e, confirming the processor speeds and the expected amount of RAM. Per the Geekbench specs, the handset contains 8GB of RAM, which is required for Apple Intelligence. The new Geekbench listing, which describes the model as the “iPhone 17,5” does not as yet show the full […] Source04:47 amiPhone 17 Pro’s video upgrades could make your camera obsolete
The upcoming iPhone 17 Pro's improved video recording capabilities will seemingly be good enough for creators to ditch their cameras. (via Cult of Mac - Apple news, rumors, reviews and how-tos)12:42 amApple just fixed one of CarPlay’s biggest usability issues
Apple released iOS 18.4 beta on Friday, with a number of unique new features. Some of the new features include Priority Notifications with Apple Intelligence, a new Food section in the Apple News app, and more. However, there was another smaller change that went under the radar, one that has to do with CarPlay – particularly on larger displays. more…Sunday February 2311:30 pmToday in Apple history: iTunes hits 10 billion downloads
On February 23, 2010, the iTunes Store officially passed the 10 billion downloads mark. The 10 billionth download was a Johnny Cash song. (via Cult of Mac - Apple news, rumors, reviews and how-tos)11:06 pmGrab Amazon's best Apple deals from $15 before the month ends
Month-end Apple deals are delivering cash savings on dozens of devices, with prices dipping to as low as $22.99.Save up to $360 on Amazon. - Image credit: AppleThere are several attractive price drops at Amazon this week, ranging from an AirTag for $22.99 to Macs from $549.You can peruse top picks below, with a full roundup of discounts in our Apple Price Guide. Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums10:21 pmApple is rumored to be opening its first store in Oxford
England's Oxford may be the next UK city to get an Apple Store, with local reports saying the company is looking to take over a prime shopping center spot.Inside Westgate Shopping Center, Oxford — image credit: Westgate Shopping CenterFollowing the news that Apple is relocating its Apple Trafford Center to larger premises in the same Manchester mall, a new rumor says the company is looking at opening its first store in Oxford. If true, the store would be located in the city's Westgate Shopping Center, while at present the nearest Apple Store is 25 miles away.According to local newspaper The Oxford Clarion, Apple is said to be considering a prominent spot in the center. The unit has been empty since May 2024 when it was vacated by clothing company Superdry. Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums10:10 pmHazel 6.0.4
Automation and cleanup utility adds support for the Brave and Vivaldi browsers. ($42 new, free update, 27.5 MB, macOS 10.14+)10:07 pmMimestream 1.6.1
Brings improvements and bug fixes to the Gmail-specific email app. ($49.99 new, free update, 11.6 MB, macOS 12+)09:45 pmJony Ive reveals his iMac design took just three weeks
Famed Apple designer Sir Jony Ive has told the BBC about working with Steve Jobs, creating the iMac, and his decision to leave the company to create his own firm.Ive and Jobs had a close working relationship upon Jobs' return to Apple.Sir Jony Ive has appeared on BBC Radio's "Desert Island Discs" show in the UK, where a celebrity recounts their life alongside the music that matters most to them. Six years after leaving Apple, he spoke to presenter Lauren Laverne about his time there and why he created his own firm called LoveFrom.Ive explained that linking both companies was how he saw design — and also designers. "Every single made object, to me, I see is an ambassador of the people who made it," he said. Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums09:28 pmiOS 18.4 beta finally enables ‘Find My’ support in South Korea
Last July, citizens of South Korea started a petition asking Apple to enable Find My support in the region. It was assumed that Find My was unavailable due to government restrictions, but that wasn’t actually the case according to the petition. Apple later agreed to launch Find My support for the region in spring 2025, and that integration is finally starting to roll out. more…09:06 pmAffinity Designer, Photo, and Publisher 2.6
Brings a variety of page management improvements to Publisher and machine learning features to Photo. (Various prices new, free update, various sizes, macOS 10.15+)