News - page 33

With Tuesday’s Beats Cables launch, Apple subsidiary Beats officially entered the charging accessories market with its first-ever collection of reinforced charging cables. They bring the brand’s signature style to an often overlooked but essential product category. Available at apple.com, new Beats Cables feature a tangle-free woven design specifically engineered to prevent fraying and increase durability.

Unlike rival item trackers, the Chipolo Pop doesn’t force you to choose between iPhone and Android. You can find your misplaced keys or cat with either Apple’s Find My network or Google’s Find My Device.

Plus, the Bluetooth tracker tag comes in a range of colors.

Apple chose Samsung Display as the exclusive supplier of OLED panels for its first foldable iPhone, expected to launch in 2026, according to a new report. The decision marks a departure from Apple’s typical multi-supplier strategy. It could help ensure high quality and reinvigorate the foldable OLED market.

Apple’s AI efforts don’t have to be hampered by its commitment to user privacy. A blog post published Monday explains how the company can generate the data needed to train its large language models without the privacy violations caused by Apple itself reading people’s emails or messages.

It’s an indirect, opt-in system that takes advantage of the small AIs the Apple builds into millions of users’ devices.

Ubisoft released Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown on Monday for iPhone, iPad and Android. The award-winning action-adventure platformer challenges players to use Time Powers to defeat time-corrupted enemies and save the land.

The game runs at 60 FPS on recent generations of mobile devices.

For the first time ever, Apple has claimed the global smartphone crown in the opening quarter of the year, thanks largely to the success of its iPhone 16e, according to data released Monday by a market analysis firm. With a strategic push into emerging markets and a rare off-cycle product launch, the tech giant surged past Samsung in Q1 2025 — a shift in the high-stakes battle for mobile dominance.

Apple sales grew during the period, while those of its chief rival Samsung dropped.

After the U.S. government seemed to exempt iPhones, Macs and other electronics from hefty tariffs Friday, a clarification issued Sunday by President Donald Trump revealed that’s not the case.

Trump said on Truth Social that his administration did not announce a tariff exemption Friday. Instead, the “existing 20% Fentanyl Tariffs” will still apply to electronics — with higher tariffs possibly coming soon.

The Vision Pro 2 might pack more upgrades than previously rumored. Instead of a minor spec bump, Apple could make the headset lighter and cheaper.

This would address two of the biggest complaints with Apple’s first mixed-reality headset.

The next big iPadOS overhaul will make the OS more like macOS. That’s what a new report claims, indicating Apple will focus on “productivity, multitasking and app window management.”

All these changes will make iPadOS behave closer to macOS than iOS.

This week on Cult of Mac’s podcast: The latest video from Front Page Tech leaker in chief Jon Prosser gives us a closer look at what iOS 19 might look like. Its glossy UI elements and rounder “squircles” for app icons get us pondering the future. And the feud between Prosser and Bloomberg scoop machine Mark Gurman gets us laughing!

Also on The CultCast:

• The iPhone 17 Pro might not look as different as previous rumors indicated.
• The threat of rising prices due to tariffs propels some shoppers to Apple stores for a little (probably unnecessary 😬) panic buying.
• On a related topic, if you thought Apple might move its manufacturing to the United States to avoid import tariffs, don’t hold your breath.
• And finally, Griffin explains how you can do almost anything on your iPhone using voice commands.

Listen to this week’s episode of The CultCast in the Podcasts app or your favorite podcast app. (Be sure to subscribe and leave us a review if you like it!) Or watch the video live stream, embedded below.

In a tremendous turnaround, President Donald Trump removed the hefty tariffs he’d imposed on phone, computers and many other electronics being imported into the United States. The change, which came late Friday, should prevent price hikes that Apple, HP, Dell, etc. would likely have had to charge customers to pay for the import taxes.

There will reportedly also be no tariffs on processors, TVs, solar panels, flash drives and removable memory cards — no matter what country they are made in.

Update: The Trump administration said Sunday that it only provided electronics with temporary tariff relief.

In a harrowing incident off the coast of Australia, an experienced swimmer’s routine morning body surfing session turned potentially deadly after riptides took him out to sea. Fortunately, 49-year-old Rick Shearman remembered the SOS feature on his Apple Watch Ultra. Using it led to a dramatic helicopter rescue that saved his life on July 13, 2024.

Update: Apple Australia’s YouTube channel posted a new video Thursday, below, dramatizing Shearman’s rescue. It recreates his desperate SOS call, his struggles amid huge swells and the dramatic relief when the rescue helicopter appears overhead. The video only lasts a minute, but by the end, with music swelling, it might bring you to tears.

A handsome and charming hedge fund manager gets fired and turns to a life of crime, stealing from his well-heeled neighbors by night — inadvertently uncovering their surprisingly dangerous secrets. That’s the gist of the entertaining trailer Apple TV+ dropped recently for drama Your Friends & Neighbors. Starring Jon Hamm, Olivia Munn and Amanda Peet, it debuts April 11.

And get this — Apple has so much confidence in the new show, it green-lighted the second season before the first one even aired.

Update: Your Friends & Neighbors started streaming on Apple TV+ on Friday (actually Thursday evening, per the streamer’s usual practice). Reviews so far are good. The Daily Beast said Hamm aand Peet “are at the top of their game” in the show. For NPR, the drama brought to mind John Cheever’s classic novels about the soullessness of American suburbs. And Deadline said the series “combines social commentary, dark humor, twisty relationships and a murder mystery.” And the already planned season two might be darker in tone.

Apple’s release date for a much smarter version of Siri will reportedly come in the fall, according to sources inside the company. While that’s many months later than Apple originally hoped, it’s still far sooner than some people feared.

Perhaps a recent shakeup of the Siri management team is bearing fruit.

New details emerged Thursday about Apple’s mad scramble to import millions of iPhones ahead of President Donald Trump’s tariffs. The company reportedly rushed 600 tons of iPhones into the United States from India last week. And, while there has been no word of a similar pre-tariff rush of iPhone imports from China, it seems unlikely Apple would overlook such an obvious move.

All this means there are surely even more iPhones, Macs, etc., stockpiled to meet U.S. consumer demand without price hikes — at least in the short term.

We hear plenty of stories about Apple Watch saving lives, but they rarely if ever involve cancer — until now. According to news from down under, Apple Watch’s persistent alerts about an elevated heart rate helped save a New Zealand psychiatrist’s life, leading to a diagnosis of acute myeloid leukemia just hours before potential organ failure.

Apple now sells iPhone 16e repair parts for DIYers and enthusiasts. You can purchase replacement parts through Apple’s online Self Service Repair Store in the US and Europe.

The spare parts go on sale within 1.5 months of the iPhone 16e hitting retail stores.

Android just can’t catch a break from U.S. teens. A survey found that 88% of that age group own an iPhone — a figure that’s held fairly steady for years.

What’s not positive news for Apple is how very few teens watch the Apple TV+ streaming service.

Murderbot is not a horror series. It’s sci-fi action comedy, no matter what the name implies — a new trailer for the upcoming Apple TV+ series makes that clear. And the trailer also shows that the plot sticks close to Martha Wells’ award-winning novels.

Watch the trailer for Murderbot season 1 that debuts in May to see for yourself:

Apple supplier Luxshare started discussing potential manufacturing relocations due to tariffs with customers, including a possible production shift to the United States, according to a new report. It cited comments made by company chairwoman Wang Laichun during an analyst call Wednesday. The Chinese manufacturer assembles iPhones and AirPods for the tech giant.

“If there is a commercial guarantee and we are able to conduct a good evaluation, we do not rule out having some products being localized to meet the needs of the US market,” Wang stated, adding that the company would carefully weigh “long-term development and safety considerations” before making such moves.

Mac shipments continue a steady upward trend, increasing 14.1% year over year during the first quarter of 2025, according to a market research firm. While three PC makers sell more units than Apple, none can match Cupertino’s annual growth rate.

But the analysts note that tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump on computers brought into the United States will have “a direct inflationary impact” later in the year, potentially cooling demand for computers of all types.

A top goal of President Donald Trump’s hefty tariffs on essentially all imports is to force companies to move their production to the United States. That includes bringing iPhone assembly to America. The problem is, there are huge roadblocks that make that goal virtually impossible.

In broad terms, America doesn’t have anywhere close to the production capacity, or sufficient numbers of workers interested in low-paying factory jobs, to produce an all-American iPhone along with everything else Trump wants made in the U.S. Also missing from the equation: customers thrilled about paying much higher costs for products made in the United States.

The result is shaping up to be years of economic difficulties for Americans.

Meta may finally launch an Instagram app for the iPad. Reportedly, the company plans to launch a dedicated iPadOS app to capitalize on the current situation surrounding TikTok.

The move could help further drive Instagram adoption among iPhone and iPad users.

Apple Arcade continues to grow next month with an exciting lineup of five new titles. A quirky multiplayer game from award-winning developer Triband — What the Clash? — headlines the bunch.

The subscription gaming service also adds With My Buddy, Lego Friends Heartlake Rush+, Words of Wonders: Search+ and Sumi Sumi: Matching Puzzle+. You can read more about them below.

Employees at Apple Stores across the country reported throngs of iPhone buyers over the weekend, according to a new report. Larger-than-average crowds look like a response to President Donald Trump’s tariffs on goods imported from China and other countries — and the specter of rising iPhone prices. In a happy surprise, the tariffs might actually drive iPhone sales before they potentially jack up prices.

Most iPhones come from China, which is up against a 54% tariff on exports to the United States. Most experts agree that rising costs will be passed on to consumers.