Follow Benjamin on Threads to keep up with his latest projects. Benjamin blogs about Apple news and rumors and posts insightful product and app reviews. Read his work on 9to5Mac and his personal blog.
Benjamin Mayo also creates apps for iOS as a professional indie developer and contractor; more details here. Email to discuss making your iOS project.
Follow @bzamayo on Twitter and follow @bzamayo on Threads.
Apple TV is back in the above-the-line Oscars awards conversation with an unexpected Best Picture nomination for F1: The Movie, the Academy announced this morning.
The blockbuster F1 also got nominated for Best Sound, Film Editing, and Visual Effects. Documentary Come See Me in the Good Light was nominated for best feature length documentary, and The Lost Bus also got recognized for Visual Effects.
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If you are having your iPhone alarms go off without making a noise, you may want to check the settings have not been reset for them.
We’re not sure how many users this affects, but we’ve heard from a small number of people who have noticed that their iPhone alarm sound has been recently changed to ‘None’, which means they go off silently …
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Nestled in Bloomberg’s reporting earlier on Apple’s plans to revamp Siri as a chatbot with iOS 27, was an interesting tidbit on a possible change in the company’s cloud strategy. Specifically, Mark Gurman says Apple and Google are discussing running the next-generation Siri models directly on Google’s servers, not Apple’s.
With iOS 26.4, Apple is set to launch the first new LLM Siri features, using models running in Private Cloud Compute based on an older generation of Gemini. But the Siri chatbot coming in the iOS 27 cycle will apparently be based off the newer, smarter, Gemini 3 models. Running these latest-gen models seemingly requires higher performance servers than what Apple can deliver right now through its own Private Compute cloud infrastructure …
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Apple is testing a new design for App Store search ads on iPhone. Some users on iOS 26.3 are noticing that the blue background around sponsored results is no longer shown, blurring the line between what paid ad results look like and the real search results that follow.
This means the only differentiator between organic results and the promoted ad is the presence of the small ‘Ad’ banner next to the app icon. Right now, it appears to be in some kind of A/B test phase.
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The popular thriller Hijack starring Idris Elba returns today with season two on Apple TV. Whereas the first season saw negotiator Sam Nelson trapped on a plane, season two uses a different mode of transport for its setting, namely a train on the Berlin underground.
Like much of Hijack, you have to suspend your disbelief at the circumstances, but if you can, there’s a thrill ride of action ahead. The eight-episode second season starts today, January 14, with new episodes dropping every Wednesday.
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The story of the Apple TV comedy The Studio has come full circle, with the actual Golden Globes ceremony last night honoring the show with the Best Television Series – Musical or Comedy award, and star Seth Rogen for Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Comedy Series. It follows major wins at the Emmys and other awards shows since the show premiered in spring 2025.
On a more serious note, Apple TV also picked up a Golden Globes win for Pluribus, with star Rhea Seehorn winning the award for best actress in a drama. This much-deserved recognition follows many years of her performances on Better Call Saul being overlooked by awards bodies.
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Apple TV offers exclusive original TV shows and movies in 4K HDR quality. You can watch across all of your screens and pick up where you left off on any device. Apple TV costs $12.99 per month. You can get a seven-day free trial for new accounts here. Here’s every Apple original television show and movie available now on Apple TV, as well as the latest trailers …
In December, without providing specific viewing figures of course, Apple said that Pluribus had become the most watched TV show in the history of the Apple TV streaming service.
The show has now also appeared in industry analytics firm Nielsen’s US streaming report. For the week commencing December 8, Pluribus came in at number 9 out of the top 10 streaming originals …
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The Apple TV streaming service kicks off its 2026 slate with the return of international thriller series Tehran. The long-delayed third season starts airing today with the first episode, with new episodes dropping each Friday through February 27.
In season three, Hugh Laurie joins the cast in the role of a South African nuclear inspector. As one of Apple’s most popular foreign language series, Tehran is also renewed for a fourth season, despite fans having to wait more than 3 years for new episodes after the season two finale.
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I have an AirTag on my keychain to keep track of my keys, but obviously an AirTag is too big and bulky to fit inside a wallet. That’s what the SwitchBot Wallet Finder is for.
Disguised inside a thin, credit-card form factor, the SwitchBot Wallet Finder connects to the Find My app on your iPhone, so you can follow its location, and it even houses a speaker so you can make it beep to help you find your wallet when it inevitably gets lost somewhere in your home. Read on for my review …
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Users have been noticing a weird iPhone bug with some pictures they have saved in their Photos app on iOS 26; sometimes, photos taken from Android phones are being imported into the Photos with a seemingly intense red color filter applied.
What’s even stranger is this red haze only shows when you actually tap on an image in Photos and zoom in. The preview thumbnails preserve their full color so if you are just scrolling through your library, you might not see anything wrong. Luckily, this bug has a simple fix you can do to put each picture back to how it was …
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After a long run in movie theaters and digital buy/rent windows, the blockbuster F1: The Movie is finally available to stream for free on Apple TV. If you aren’t an Apple TV subscriber yet, you can get a seven day free trial here for new accounts.
F1 stars Brad Pitt as Sonny Hayes, an elder racing driver who comes out of retirement to try help a fictional F1 racing team called APX GP win a race to secure their future in the sport. Damson Idris plays the plucky young teammate, Joshua Pearce.
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Today was the last race of the 2025 F1 championship, and that also meant the last time ESPN will broadcast a race in the United States. From next year, Apple takes over with all races streaming as part of an Apple TV subscription.
Apple released a new social media ad for the deal today, giving us our first look at how the F1 channel will look inside of the TV app.
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The Indian government issued a mandate that intends to force smartphone companies like Apple and Samsung to preinstall a state-run security app called ‘Sanchar Saathi’ on phones sold in the region. The companies have 90 days to comply.
But Reuters reports Apple intends to refuse the order and will not install the app on iPhones. The company will tell the Indian government that it does not comply with such orders in any market in which it participates, due to the associated security and privacy risks.
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While I don’t have a bunch of Thunderbolt 5 compatible gear yet, that transition is coming promising blisteringly-fast data transfer speeds and even more bandwidth for high-res external displays.
The 11-port OWC Thunderbolt 5 dock (on sale for 15% off for Black Friday) makes the convenient single cable desk lifestyle even better, with access to higher throughputs. By plugging in your MacBook Pro to the dock with a Thunderbolt 5 cable, you can connect to fast external storage, 2.5Gb Ethernet, up to two 6K displays, keep your laptop battery charged with 140 W power delivery, and access even more I/O peripherals …
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Regulation enforcement against Apple in the EU may be about to intensify. Under the Digital Markets Act rules, the company must notify the EU commission about services that reach the thresholds for so-called gatekeeper status, targeting big tech services with more than 45 million active users in Europe.
As it is obliged, Apple informed the EU that Apple Maps and Apple Ads meet that level. The commission now has 45 days to decide whether Maps and the company’s ad businesses are sufficiently monopolistic to warrant a step up in regulation.
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Apple has launched its new holiday ad A Critter Carol, which features a misplaced iPhone 17 Pro being used by woodland critters to record themselves singing a Christmas carol.
Apple simultaneously released a making of video that shows how the company also used iPhones in the making of the film, as well as how all the hand-crafted puppetry was animated and brought to life.
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The animal history documentary series Prehistoric Planet returns today on Apple TV with a new Ice Age installment. If you aren’t a subscriber, now is a great time with a 50% off Black Friday deal available right now.
With the series hailing from the makers of the recent live action Lion King remake, Prehistoric Planet uses the latest CGI techniques to depict photorealistic sequences of long-extinct creatures …
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Update: The Anker Nano is 30% off right now on Amazon for Black Friday. Review below.
The iPhone Air has surprisingly good battery life for users with light-to-medium daily usage habits. But if you are going to be away from a charger for a long time, especially going travelling like on a plane, you’ll probably want to carry some extra juice with you.
Apple has made its custom MagSafe Battery for iPhone Air, that fits precisely beneath the camera plateau on the back of the phone. But another big competitor in this space is Anker, with the Anker Nano Power Bank in a similar size promising 5,000 mAH capacity at half the price of Apple’s offering. But how much extra battery life should you actually expect to get from these power banks, and which is best?
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Apple TV is ramping up its promotion for the upcoming streaming launch of F1: The Movie on Apple TV, timed for the Las Vegas F1 weekend and the launch of a new 50% off for 6 months deal for Black Friday.
The Sphere dominates the Vegas strip, and Apple TV took advantage of the unique shape of the structure to show a depiction of Brad Pitt’s Sonny Hayes inside his APX GP racing helmet.
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After macOS Tahoe launched, some intrepid developers noticed that Electron apps could cause the Mac’s rendering system to be overloaded due to an incompatibility with the way Electron apps were overriding the default window corner mask. Users would experience issues like stuttery scrolling when interacting with any app (including non-Electron ones), as long as an Electron app window was currently visible on the desktop.
Major Electron-based apps have subsequently released software updates to work around this bug, but this meant waiting for an update from the developer of each Electron app installed on your Mac. With the latest 26.2 betas, Apple has now fixed the incompatibility at a system-wide level.
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Apple TV today revealed that Pluribus has become its most successful new drama series debut ever, topping the viewership set by Severance season two earlier in the year. Via Deadline, Apple says Vince Gilligan’s mysterious new show has captivated audiences and set a new viewership record for biggest global drama series launch for the streamer.
Pluribus was most popular in US, UK, Canada, Brazil, Australia, Germany, Mexico, India and France. New episodes of the show are rolling out each Friday, with episode four dropping in a couple of hours.
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In September, Apple controversially cancelled the launch of new series The Savant, seemingly in the wake of the murder of political activist Charlie Kirk. The company said it looks forward to releasing the show at a later time, but two months on, there’s still no release date in sight. It’s listed as “coming at a later date” in the TV app.
Meanwhile, Apple TV has perhaps just repeated the same fiasco for a second time. The service was set to premiere French-language series The Hunt on December 3, having released a trailer earlier this month. But now, all references to The Hunt have been scrubbed, including removal of the press release from the Apple TV PR newsroom and the YouTube trailer is now marked private.
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The Apple Store today announced its Black Friday shopping event, which runs November 28 through December 1. Shoppers can get up to a $250 gift card when buying eligible Mac, iPhone, iPad, Watch and more.
Apple’s gift card promotions don’t generally represent the best value for money. For instance, you can buy AirPods 4 on Amazon right now discounted more than the $25 gift card value Apple is offering in this promotion. Similarly, the 15-inch MacBook Air is discounted by $250 right now on Amazon, exceeding the $200 gift card Apple is offering … As always, for the best deals around, check out 9to5Toys.
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