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- Monday March 10
- 02:30 pmM3 iPad Air review roundup: An unexciting but worthwhile update
Read the latest M3 iPad Air reviews highlighting its speed boost and overall value as a top tablet choice for many users. (via Cult of Mac - Apple news, rumors, reviews and how-tos)02:08 pm3D-printed iPhone 17 design mockups give us a new look at what’s expected
By this point, we’re seeing a very consistent story emerging in terms of the iPhone 17 design for each of the four models – and a new video with 3D-printed mockups helps bring those designs to life. The designs are based on CAD drawings first shared by Majin Bu and since endorsed by two other Apple leakers … more…02:08 pm3D-printed iPhone 17 design mockups give us a new look at what’s expected
By this point, we’re seeing a very consistent story emerging in terms of the iPhone 17 design for each of the four models – and a new video with 3D-printed mockups helps bring those designs to life. The designs are based on CAD drawings first shared by Majin Bu and since endorsed by two other Apple leakers … more…02:01 pmApple TV+ kicks off SXSW with world premiere event for ‘The Studio’ series
This weekend, at the Paramount Theatre in Austin, Texas, Apple TV+ celebrated the world premiere of its upcoming comedy “The Studio” at the… The post appeared first on MacDailyNews.01:40 pmM3 iPad Air reviews: Same great Air as before, better Magic Keyboard
Apple’s M3 iPad Air , and the first reviews just dropped. Here’s a roundup of the key points you should know about the upgraded new iPad Air. more…01:18 pmiPhone 17 video hints at how fall updates will feel in the hand
Apple's new camera bump designs for the iPhone 17 have surfaced once again, this time in the form of 3D-printed models showcased in a video that offers a hint of what the fall 2025 flagship may feel like in the hand.A render of what the iPhone 17 Pro could look like - Image Credit: AppleInsiderSince the start of 2025, leakers have been claiming that Apple will be making major changes to the camera bump for the iPhone 17 generation. Over the space of a few weeks, leakers have shared renders of supposed designs for the inbound models, with radical alterations made to the backs of the models.Inevitably, someone has used these leaks to create physical 3D representations of the claims. In a video by iDeviceHelp on YouTube, the new iPhone 17 lineup's rumored designs have been 3D printed and checked out. Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums01:17 pmDeals: AirPods 4 plunge to $99, while AirPods Pro 2 fall to $169
The best AirPods 4 price has returned, with Apple's latest earbuds falling to $99.99 at Amazon. You can also pick up AirPods Pro 2 for $169.99, a discount of $80 off MSRP.AirPods 4 are down to lowest price on record - Image credit: AppleThis week's AirPods sale at Amazon marks the return of the lowest price on record for AirPods 4, which have dipped to $99.99. You can also pick up the higher-end AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation (ANC) for $148.99.View the deals Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums01:06 pmThe Apple Vision Pro is clearly a commercial flop
Apple's Vision Pro headset, despite being a technical marvel, is clearly a commercial flop. The spatial computer… The post appeared first on MacDailyNews.01:00 pmGoogle Gemini Is Coming to Android Auto but the Rollout Is Troubling
Google has started previewing Gemini for Android Auto before it is ready, and users aren’t becoming fans. The post appeared first on TechNewsWorld.12:43 pmSmarter Siri delay could be caused by major security concerns, suggests developer
The long wait for a smarter Siri is to get even longer, with some indications that the new features we were originally expecting in iOS 18.4 may now be pushed back to iOS 19. Apple hasn’t provided any real explanation, but two theories have so far been put forward, and now a developer and data analyst has suggested that security concerns may be a third reason – and by far the biggest problem … more…12:00 pmCanadians may never get to use AirPods Pro 2 as hearing aids
Despite Health Canada approving AirPods Pro 2 as hearing aids, Canadians are still unable to use feature because of still further regulatory hurdles which look unlikely to be cleared.AirPods ProApple updated AirPods Pro 2 to act as both a hearing test and hearing aids for US users in October 2024, and it's been rolling out to other countries since. But despite approval by Health Canada, the country's federal department for health services, the feature is still not available.According to local CTV News, Canadians are complaining that they have specifically bought AirPods Pro 2 because of the Health Canada approval and feel cheated without it. Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums11:51 amApple teases new Crocker Park store in Westlake, Ohio
Apple’s website is teasing a new Crocker Park retail store in Westlake, Ohio, with a three-sentence addition to the store’s listing. Get ready. Great things are in store. A brand-new Apple Store is coming soon … more…11:25 amBen Stiller & Eddy cue gush about making 'Severance' with Apple TV+
"Severance" executive producer Ben Stiller and Apple TV+'s Eddy Cue spoke at SXSW about making the show and just how much Apple plays a part in the series.Ben Stiller (left) and Eddy Cue at SXSW"Severance" is the most-watched show on Apple TV+ since the streaming service launched in 2019 and is such a talked-about series that it's even been parodied on network TV. Apple's senior vice president of Services, Eddy Cue, and "Severance" executive producer Ben Stiller have now interviewed each other at the SXSW festival."I can't wait for every episode. Even though I have access to all of 'em, I tend to wait," revealed Cue. "This reminds me of shows back in the days when television, you'd tune in on a particular night and everybody was so excited all week to get to the next episode." Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums11:23 am18.8-inch foldable iPad or MacBook prototype has in-display Face ID, says leaker
Multiple sources have reported Apple working on an 18.8-inch foldable iPad or MacBook, and a leaker today reports that there’s a prototype of the device with Face ID embedded beneath the display. While more than one supply-chain source has pointed to signs of an 18.8-inch folding display, differing views have been expressed about whether the intended use is for an iPad Pro or MacBook … more…11:23 amApple's foldable iPad rumored to get under-display Face ID
The latest rumor about Apple's folding iPad suggests that the device has a Face ID dot projector underneath the display, instead of in the display bezel like on the currently shipping iPad ProAn iPad Pro and Apple PencilOne of Apple's early prototypes for the folding iPad Pro reportedly has a new feature. The device is said to have a "metal superstructure lens," which leaker "Digital Chat Station" believes incorporates the Face ID infrared projectors, underneath the screen.As it stands now, the projector is under the glass of the iPad Pro, but not under the usable area of the screen. Rumor Score: 🤔 Possible Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums11:15 amiPhone 16e review: A study in contrasts
Macworld At a glanceExpert's Rating Pros Exceptional speed Superbly future-proofed Good battery life Cons Outdated camera setup No MagSafe Apple Intelligence is half-baked Our Verdict In many ways the iPhone 16e is astonishingly good, delivering superb speed, good battery life, the latest Apple Intelligence features, and an attractive design at an affordable price. And then you bump into the lack of MagSafe and the single rear camera lens. The only word for it is lopsided, and I’m struggling to see who the iPhone 16e is for. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Price When ReviewedFrom $599 Best Prices Today: Apple iPhone 16e Retailer Price $599 View Deal Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket The iPhone SE is gone and its replacement is here. Or is it? Apple’s newest cheapest smartphone isn’t actually all that cheap and differs from the SE in some major ways. More of a replacement for the iPhone 14, then? Maybe. Kind of. It’s complicated. I spent a week with the iPhone 16e, putting the device through our exhaustive testing process and weighing its place in the Apple range and your life. Is this the budget (ish) smartphone for you? Let’s find out. Design and build quality: A smart balance This is a slim, lightweight, good-looking phone with a classic design that has stood the test of time. It feels great in the hand, and the camera module on the rear is far less obtrusive than those on costlier iPhones, so it doesn’t wobble so much when placed on a flat surface. If you’re coming from the 3rd-gen iPhone SE the design will feel like a massive step forward: gone is the SE’s Home button, cramped screen, and rounded sides, replaced by a handsome all-screen design with squared-off edges. For those more accustomed to the current iPhone range, however, it will feel like the opposite. The 16e may have been branded to tie in with the late-2024 iPhones but it follows the design cues of two generations earlier. David Price / Foundry There are a few differences, but in most respects, you’re looking at the externals of an iPhone 14. It has the same aluminum frame and glass back (without the color infusion added to the iPhone 15), the same 6.1-inch 2532×1170 screen with the same notch, and the same physical dimensions… although it weighs fractionally less than the 14, presumably because of having one camera fewer. (That’s difference number one, which I’ll come back to.) Another important difference between the 16e and the iPhone 14 and 3rd-gen SE is the inclusion of an Action button in place of the mute switch on the lefthand edge. This can still be used as a mute switch–in fact, that’s what I use it for on my 16 Plus–but you can instead reprogram it to open the Camera app, turn on a Focus mode or the Flashlight, or various other handy options. That list of actions, by the way, now includes one new option: Visual Intelligence, which on the late-2024 iPhones is triggered using the Camera Control. This is because the iPhone 16e does not feature the Camera Control. I’m not a huge fan of the Camera Control on my 16 Plus, which feels unnecessary (since you can easily swipe to the camera from the lock screen) and which I sometimes press by accident with the fourth finger of my left hand when holding the device in portrait mode. So as far as I’m concerned this is a minor loss. The only downside is that Visual Intelligence has shifted to the Action button, and you’ll find silent mode in the Control Center. A final cosmetic difference from the iPhone 14 is the range of colors. The iPhone 14 came in six widely varied colors: mild greyish blue, light purple, yellow, black, white, and (Product) Red’s glorious unabashed scarlet. The iPhone 16 has black, white, ultramarine, teal, and an excellent pink. Even the SE had midnight, starlight, and red. But the 16e comes in just white or black. It’s not a lot of choice or visual interest and feels like a deliberate strategy to encourage upselling. David Price / Foundry Mind you, the black model I tested is sharp. The rear is super-matt, to the extent that it’s difficult to photograph (my colleague on Macwelt makes the same complaint about the white finish), and I love the contrast between this and the shiny Apple logo in the center. Besides, if monotone finishes strike you as boring, you can always buy a brightly colored case to jazz the phone up a little. I got Apple’s Winter Blue silicone case and like it a lot. Features: Surprising inclusions, strange omissions Whereas the physical design is a set of sensible compromises, walking a steady middle path between the outdated look of the iPhone 14 and the unattainable upgrades of the iPhones 15 and 16, the 16e’s features list is more of a rollercoaster ride. It verges wildly from one extreme to another. The device misses out on some truly basic features that budget smartphone buyers have every right to expect, yet manages to squeeze in others that I’d categorise as luxuries. The first incongruously generous inclusion (and really the defining element of the entire product) is Apple Intelligence, the company’s AI platform and vision of the future. Apple Intelligence is a demanding thing to run, requiring as a minimum an A18 processor and 8GB of RAM, and it would be unrealistic at this stage to fit those things into a budget iPhone. Instead of conceding defeat and leaving the feature out of the 16e (as it did with the 11th-gen iPad), Apple decided not to have a true budget iPhone anymore. That’s why I’m reviewing a $599 phone instead of a $429 one. Was this drastic step worth it? Yes and no. Apple Intelligence is still at an early stage in its development, with features gradually rolling out as they’re finished… or in some cases, before they’re finished. It doesn’t feel very polished right now, but this probably won’t be representative of your experience across the life of the phone; Apple is very committed to AI right now and we can expect future iOS updates to feature a lot of improvements in this area. It’s a good thing that 16e owners will get to be a part of that. There are far too many components of Apple Intelligence to cover them all here, but here are a few thoughts from my time with the iPhone 16e: Visual Intelligence: For certain things, this is fun and useful–it can identify cars, dogs, and plants quickly and accurately. But can be flaky, misunderstanding street signs and failing to recognize what was obviously a London phone number on a storefront with only the initial zero cropped out. Genmoji: Hit and miss. Lots of duff results, like a request for a “cat on a bus” showing the cat superimposed over the bus rather than riding the bus; my “tiger eating grapes” had a bunch of normal grapes in one hand and random objects (a strawberry; an iced gem) in the other. You have to filter out the dross. And any time you mention a person (I thought “Edgar Allen Poe eating ice cream” would be funny) it insists you instead choose someone from your Photos folders. I couldn’t see an obvious way around this. Web page summaries: Mostly excellent on factual/informative pages, although it struggled badly with opinion pieces that follow an argument. To its credit, the feature admitted this weakness when I selected an article of that type. Clean Up: Inconsistent. I had trouble removing a car from a scene, which left behind a distorted shadow. Writing Tools: Good for correcting typos and grammar errors but the stylistic amendments can be painful. When told to rewrite something “like a professional document” it simply replaced every normal word with a longer synonym, like someone who’s just taken a vocabulary course. Notification summaries: Unreliable, as we all know. Apple Intelligence is technologically quite impressive but nevertheless goes wrong fairly often and isn’t the most intuitive to use: more of a curiosity or proof of concept than a serious set of tools, really. It will get better, but right now it’s of limited value. And that’s leaving aside the ethical issues (using up water, taking people’s jobs) that AI poses more generally. Yeah, I’d call that unexpected results.David Price / Foundry Still, the inclusion of Apple Intelligence led to the second act of generosity: an exceptionally (some would say unnecessarily) impressive set of tech specs. Having that chip and RAM combo will be useful for things other than AI; they’ll ensure the 16e is future-proofed to run demanding apps for a long time to come, for one thing. And it also means it has some serious processing power, which I’ll explore in a later section. We’ve covered the positives, but now we need to mention the negatives, and there are two almost criminal gaps on the feature list. First, the iPhone 16e doesn’t support MagSafe, even though the iPhone 14 did (as did the 12 and 13 before it). This, as I’ve discussed elsewhere, is a huge disappointment. Before the launch of the iPhone 12, wireless charging felt like the poor cousin of its wired equivalent: slower, less power-efficient, and just as much of a hassle because you had to make sure the phone was in the sweet spot on the charging puck, and a single accidental nudge could result in an uncharged device. MagSafe, which pulls the phone into the sweet spot and holds it there securely, changed all that. The only time I use wired charging with my iPhone 16 Plus is when I desperately need to top up the battery as quickly as possible before going out. The iPhone 16e, by contrast, feels like a step back to 2020, and wireless charging is once again a tiresome worry. At least you get an onscreen graphic and haptic vibration to tell you charging has begun–but it isn’t as easy, and doesn’t offer the same speeds, as charging with all the other MagSafe-compatible iPhones. Which is to say, every single other model. The second disappointing negative is the fact that the 16e also has only one rear camera lens. This carries implications for Portrait Mode, zoom, and more, which I’ll discuss in the next section. Whereas the iPhone 16 Plus (pink) has a distinct module and then the lenses extend above that, the 16e (black) just has the lens sticking up.David Price / Foundry Camera performance: Mostly good, but with disappointing limitations Whereas the iPhone 16 Pro has three cameras on the rear and the iPhone 16 has two, the 16e has just one. If that makes it sound like it will be a third as good at photography as the Pro model, don’t worry; the good news is that not all lenses are created equal, and the additional lenses on the other models are somewhat less important than the one on the 16e. Nevertheless, this is a serious disadvantage for the new phone. The 16 Pro’s third lens is the telephoto. The fact that the 16e doesn’t get it means (like the 16) it doesn’t have optical zoom in the strict technical sense, although Apple claims a 2x zoom by cropping into the center of high-resolution shots taken using the main lens. Given that the 16e has the same whopping 48MP wide-angle camera as the other iPhone 16 phones, 2x shots have plenty of detail—it is just as good as a non-zoomed shot taken using the iPhone 14’s perfectly decent 12MP camera–so that’s fair enough. But zoom in any more (up to 5x, for example, which the Pro can achieve with no issues) and images will start to lose detail and show pixellation. A bigger loss for me is the ultra-wide secondary lens. As the name suggests, this means you miss out on the handy 0.5x anti-zoom option for wider-angle shots, an important tool when photographing landscapes. But the fact that the 16e doesn’t have two lenses means you also can’t take macro shots or “true”‘ Portrait photos, and my suspicion is that the average iPhone owner takes more photos of people than landscapes. There is still a Portrait option in the 16e’s Camera app, of course, but this is all done via software trickery rather than by comparing depth data from two lenses. This trickery relies on iOS knowing what it’s looking at, so it only works on people. I tried taking Portrait shots of mailboxes, dogs, and cats, and in every case, it said “No person detected” and refused to play ball. Even if you do snap a human model, the bokeh effect won’t be as good as the other iPhone 16 phones. I noticed some softness around the edges, with parts of my model’s clothing and hair blending erroneously in with the background. It’s not terrible by any means but it is noticeably worse than the real thing. The 16e (left) has trouble with soft edges that the 16 Plus (right) handled with ease. In other respects, however, the 16’s camera performance is excellent, and that’s what I mean by the relative importance of the lenses. My guess is that for 90 percent of iPhone photography, the limitations listed above won’t be a factor. For those 90 percent of shots, detail was excellent, color reproduction was vibrant and faithful, and the results were great. The 16e even did well in difficult lighting thanks to the inclusion of Smart HDR 5, the latest iteration of a feature that takes multiple exposures and blends elements of each into the finished shot so that bright light in one part of the frame doesn’t result in loss of detail in another darker part. This wasn’t perfect, but I found that I could shoot a shadowed building with a bright sun directly behind, genuinely making the worst compositional decisions on purpose, and still clearly discern the brickwork. No small feat. Sure, the building is a little dark. But these were the most challenging lighting conditions I could find and it’s really not bad. (Incidentally, the 16 Plus performed no better in this test,.)David Price / Foundry Performance: Is there such a thing as too fast? That last section was critical, but we’re back on solid ground here. With an A18 processor and 8GB of RAM, the iPhone 16e is an insanely overpowered phone for the money, and this was reflected in speed testing. In terms of general processing, this is essentially the same as the iPhone 16, and it’s about as powerful as iPhones get right now. Across the CPU tests in Geekbench 5 and 6, and the various Neural Engine tests in Geekbench AI, there was nothing to choose between the 16e and even the 16 Pro, despite the latter featuring an A18 Pro. This is an absolute powerhouse.10:56 amThe Apple Studio Display Standard Glass is $220 Off
Need an Apple-branded monitor that can do the job? Today’s deal should interest you. The Apple Studio Display with Standard Glass is down to just $1,379 from its original price of $1,600 on Amazon. The Apple Studio Display is a premium monitor with industry-leading 5K resolution, built-in communication hardware, and a port to charge your […] The post appeared first on iLounge.10:56 amApple launches two daily cash bonus promotions for new users
Two new Apple Card promotions are in the works for new users. Apple debuted not just one, but two bonuses for new Apple Card users. Namely, a $75 welcome bonus and a $200 cash back in the course of ten months. The specifics are that the Apple Card owner has to make ten purchases every […] The post appeared first on iLounge.10:55 amApple Wins Ackerman Tetris Movie Lawsuit
Apple recently won a legal case about the unauthorized use of an existing book for its film ‘Tetris’. The Cupertino-based company was hit with a lawsuit shortly after debuting the Tetris movie in March 2023. The documentary drama was bought by Apple TV+, went straight to production and became available for streaming a few years […] The post appeared first on iLounge.10:54 amBrazil demands App Store third-party marketplaces
Brazil has mandated that Apple open iOS to third-party marketplaces in the country within three months. The Brazilian federal court said that Apple must allow third-party marketplaces in 90 days or face a fine of approximately $40,000 daily. Judge Pablo Zuniga mentioned that Apple ‘has complied with similar obligations’ in the EU, and there hasn’t […] The post appeared first on iLounge.