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Why Apple refuses to kill the unpopular Mac mini

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Apple Mac mini
Apple doesn't sell many Mac minis. But the small desktop computer appeals to a big, important group of buyers.
Image: Ed Hardy/Cult of Mac

Guess what percentage of Mac buyers choose the Mac mini. Whatever your estimate is, the real number is probably lower. Much lower.

Despite selling so very few of them, it seems likely Apple keeps making and updating the tiny macOS desktop because many of them go to young buyers just starting on a lifetime of buying Apple products.

Spotify blames Apple for this Spotify Connect downgrade

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Spotify logo on iPhone
Controlling the volume of Spotify Connect devices from your iPhone is getting difficult.
Photo: Cult of Mac

Spotify users can no longer control the volume of Spotify Connect devices using their iPhone’s volume button. Instead, they must use the workaround: an in-app volume slider.

The company is making this change because Apple discontinued the technology behind this feature.

Apple Photos’ new AI Clean Up feature works great … unless it doesn’t!

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A photo edited with Apple Photos' AI-powered Clean Up feature shows a man with a hideously overgrown soul patch.
Don't let this happen to you!
Photo: Charlie Chapman

The new AI-powered Clean Up feature in the Apple Photos app got people raving about the magical ability to “fix” pictures — and posting examples of when things go horribly wrong. The positive experiences sound great, but the negative ones look like pure nightmare fuel.

Apple added the Clean Up feature in iOS 18.1 beta 3, released Wednesday, and users put the new photo touch-up tool to the test immediately. The results, posted on X, show a wide range of outcomes, including some hilarious misfires.

Major websites opt out of Apple’s content scraping to train AI

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websites opt out of Apple AI scraping
Bot crawlers scraping website content for training AI is more controversial than other uses, like improving search functionality.
Photo: Cult of Mac Deals

Many prominent news outlets and social media platforms have opted out of Apple’s AI training data collection via website scraping, according to a new report Thursday.

Apple does it through a new tool called Applebot-Extended, which the iPhone giant introduced less than three months ago. If major content websites opt out of Apple AI scraping, that could have implications for the continuing development of Apple Intelligence.

Apple shows why it’s ahead in AI, not behind

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Animation showing Apple Intelligence on iPhone
Apple Intelligence is a powerful LLM that runs both in the cloud and on-device.
Image: Apple

Contrary to popular opinion, Apple appears to be ahead in AI — and in some cases seems far in front of the competition. The revelation comes from an Apple white paper that hasn’t gotten much attention, but should.

A white paper on Apple’s Foundation Model, the company’s homegrown LLM (large-language model) that powers Apple Intelligence, reveals two important facts: it’s the safest in design and highly competitive with both Meta’s Llama and OpenAI’s GPT-4. This seems to debunk a big myth about Apple’s AI efforts: that the company’s privacy-first philosophy would hold it back.

The Apple Foundation Model is just as capable in tests of writing and summarization compared to the top LLMs by OpenAI, Meta, Mistral AI and others. And thanks to Apple’s strict guidelines for expunging harmful content, human-evaluated tests repeatedly rank its foundation model as the safest above all the rest — by a wide margin.

It looks like Apple Intelligence could be off to a good start.

iPhone 17 Pro Max might exclusively ship with a superior cooling system

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iPhone 15 Pro Max
The iPhone 17 Pro Max might pack some key upgrades over its other siblings.
Photo: Rajesh Pandey/Cult of Mac

Apple will seemingly continue offering enhanced specs on its Pro Max iPhone to differentiate it from other models. As a part of the strategy, the company might only equip the iPhone 17 Pro Max with 12GB RAM in 2025.

Additionally, the phone will feature an upgraded cooling system. This system will use a combination of a vapor chamber and graphite sheets for better thermal efficiency.

Apple Music now lets you export playlists to YouTube Music

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Apple Music to YouTube Music
Apple Music to YouTube Music playlist gets easier.
Photo/Graphics: Apple/YouTube/Rajesh Pandey

In a surprising move, Apple is making it easier to transfer your playlists from Apple Music to YouTube Music. This is the first time the Cupertino company is offering a tool like this for Apple Music users.

If you are an Apple Music subscriber, the tool makes transferring your playlists to YouTube Music easy.

Hawaii drivers can now put their license in Apple Wallet

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Apple Wallet with digital driver's license options
Get your Hawaii digital driver's license or ID.
Photo: Ed Hardy/Cult of Mac

Hawaii just became the latest U.S. state to support digital driver’s licenses and IDs stored in the Wallet app on iPhone or Apple Watch.

That brings to seven the number of states to support Apple’s system, as several joined since the start of summer.