Zac Hall

You’ve always been able to ping your missing iPhone from your Apple Watch. Now with iOS 17, the iPhone can easily return the favor.

Mixed reality headset makers seem to face a choice: do it well, or do it cheap. Priced from $3500, Apple Vision Pro sure ain’t doing it cheap. The consensus from those who have tried Vision Pro, though, seems to be that the experience is technologically impressive.

Can the same be said for Meta’s new Quest 3 mixed reality headset? The $500 XR headset is only loosely defined as cheap, of course, because of Apple’s hard-to-fathom price tag. Nevertheless, is it possible to sell mixed reality for a literal fraction of Vision Pro’s price and still make the experience compelling?

Should Apple’s blue bubbles be subject to the European Union’s recent Digital Market Act? That’s something the European Commission is investigating, according to people in the know.

iFixit already gave the iPhone 15 Pro Max its usual teardown treatment. For the vanilla iPhone 15 model, the teardown experts served up a microscopic spin on the usual disassembly video.

Apple extended optical zoom to 5x on the iPhone 15 Pro Max camera system thanks to an advanced tetraprism design. Customers opting for the standard-sized iPhone 15 Pro, on the other hand, maintain 3x optical zoom from prior models. The good news for 5x zoom fans is that both iPhone 16 Pro sizes next year could have tetraprism designs.

Apple introduced a clever new Screen Distance feature in iOS 17 and iPadOS 17. iPhones and iPads with Face ID are now able to notify you when you may be using the device too close to your eyes. The idea is to detect and prevent eye strain for everyone while lowering the risk of nearsightedness in kids. But what if the feature is actually disrupting how you use your device?

It’s not just the cost of groceries that has gone up. The market price for WhatsApp exploits are also on the rise, but inflation may not be to blame.

Four out of five Apple employees approve of the work Tim Cook does as CEO, according to a new approval rating survey. That compares to just four out of one hundred X employees who approve of CEO Linda Yaccarino’s job so far.

Update: Public beta versions of iOS 17.1 and company are out today.

Apple has released the second developer beta version of the upcoming iOS 17.1, watchOS 10.1, tvOS 17.1, and macOS 14.1 software updates. Apple has also released the fourth visionOS beta for developers creating Apple Vision Pro software.

New data from CIRP shows just how big of an opportunity Apple Watch and AirPods have among customers buying new iPhones.

Have a Venmo debit or credit card? You should be able to add it to the Wallet app on iPhone and use Apple Pay if you haven’t already.

TikTok may be going ad-free for five bucks a month, but you’ll have to pay a bit more for a similar experience on Meta’s platforms. A new report details Meta’s proposal to offer a version of Facebook and Instagram with no ads that would cost nearly $17/month.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella had his day in court today, where he answered for Bing’s inability to compete with Google Search. In his view, Apple’s Google Search deal protects Safari from being killed by Chrome.

TikTok appears to be joining the likes of X, Meta, and Snap with a new premium tier in the works. Rather than selling status or experimental features, however, TikTok is taking a more YouTube-like approach.

Will Apple ever compete with Google on building a search engine for the web? Never say never, but Google pays Apple $15 billion per year to not think too hard about it. That’s something the government hopes it can disrupt. If the incentives for Apple were different someday, would Apple have the tools to go to bat against Google?

iPhone 12 users in France can breathe a sigh of relief now after days of radiation exposure concerns. That’s concern that French authorities raised this month due to new radiation level test results.

Apple Music Radio isn’t the only new game in town for Apple’s Podcasts app in iOS 17. The crossover feature also brings in spoken word news and magazine articles for Apple News+ subscribers. Beyond Apple, more than a dozen apps from the App Store can also deliver member content through Apple’s Podcasts app.

Apple’s iOS 17 update includes so many new features that it’s hard to highlight each enhancement. One new thing that Apple is showcasing is an upgraded payments experience in the Wallet app.

Following the iPhone 15 launch, Tim Cook has embarked on an international tour. While in London, the Apple CEO gave an interview to The Independent to talk Apple gaming and Vision Pro. And while we’ve not yet seen Cook don the Apple headset in public, using it has apparently become part of his evening ritual.

There’s officially a CarPlay app for everything now. Airstream, yes, that Airstream, now features a CarPlay app for monitoring RV functions.

9to5Mac has detailed several changes new to the Apple Watch user experience to accommodate the new widget system on watchOS 10. Interestingly, for Apple Watch Ultra users, one of those changes is especially welcome.