Benjamin Mayo

Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman today reports that Apple will launch its upcoming AI initiatives in iOS 18 and other operating systems under the brand name ‘Apple Intelligence’, which is obviously a convenient twist on the ‘AI’ acronym. The company will official announce the new plans at its WWDC keynote on Monday.

Rather than focus on writing poetry or making up images, the Apple Intelligence suite of features will use large language models to offer functionality that helps users throughout their daily life, with abilities like summarization and rich auto-reply suggestions.

Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman today reported on a few additional features to expect from the Messages app in iOS 18.

One of the perhaps most requested messaging changes will be an upgrade to the Tapbacks system, allowing users to respond to any message using an emoji of their choice. Apple will also address another long-standing feature request, adding the ability to schedule messages to be sent at a later time.

As we await Apple’s tantalizing iOS 18 and other announcements at its WWDC conference next week, the Wall Street Journal has an interesting profile about changing attitudes towards AI inside Apple, and how the company became more comfortable with taking risk.

In particular, it pinpoints the moment when Apple’s approach on AI shifted. The report says SVP Craig Federighi was testing Github’s Copilot code completion features in late 2022, during his Christmas holiday break, and came away impressed. This swiftly led to an internal mandate in the software engineering group to explore and productize as much artificial intelligence functionality as possible.

Screen Time promises to allow parents to restrict access to various apps, website and content on their children’s devices. However, ever since Screen Time launched with iOS 12, Apple has been playing whack-a-mole as users discovered new workarounds to avoid the enforced restrictions.

As reported by the Wall Street Journal, Apple will be fixing yet another one of these bugs in the next iOS software update. Security researchers had reported this particular bug to Apple multiple times over the last three years, but Apple had rebuffed or ignored them until now.

Apple reportedly held talks with telecoms giant China Mobile, with a view to launch Apple TV+ in China, according to The Information. If a deal is struck, Apple TV+ would be the only US streaming service to have a presence in China.

Chinese law typically prevents US services from distributing their content directly. The Information says the proposed deal would see China Mobile offer Apple TV+ for a monthly fee, and feature its content prominently on China Mobile set-top boxes.

The latest telecoms customer survey from ASCI has been published and — despite rising prices and industry pullbacks — the bottom line is streaming services are still hot.

Almost every video streaming service tracked by ASCI grew its customer satisfaction score compared to the previous year, with Apple one of the biggest risers. The 2024 score for Apple TV+ came in at 79, up from 76 in the year-ago survey.

Spotify is once again raising the price of Spotify Premium in the United States. Although the ad-supported free tier remains available, the price of Spotify’s Premium tier is now more expensive than Apple Music. Spotify customers will be notified of the increases over the next month.

Spotify Premium Individual is now priced at $11.99 per month, compared to $10.99 per month for Apple Music. The Family plan price is also up and now costs $19.99, compared to $16.99 for Apple Music Family …

Although the iPhone 16 Pro will mostly resemble the design of the iPhone 15 Pro, we are expecting some small changes. The screen sizes of both the Pro and Pro Max are increasingly slightly, and we may also see a dramatic further reduction in the black border that is visible around the screen.

That’s according to IceUniverse, who says that the iPhone 16 Pro may in fact feature the world’s thinnest smartphone bezels.

iOS 18 is expected to be a pretty significant release in terms of the number of changes and new features. While artificial intelligence capabilities will be the big theme of the update, we are also expecting other enhancements.

Today, Mark Gurman writes in his Power On newsletter that Apple is preparing to overhaul the iPhone Control Center as part of iOS 18. The new design will include updates to the ‘now playing’ music widget and the HomeKit smart home controls.

By default, when you make a new note in the Notes app on your iPhone, you have to be bold. Well, the first line of the note is in bold as it begins writing in a heading style. The second line and beyond uses standard body font size.

Often, this is undesirable and you just want to jot stuff down without the formality of a page title. Here’s how to change your notes settings to do just that.

We have seen these kind of scams before, but this particularly case is on a ginormous industry-like scale. Five people have been charged on counts of fraud for their involvement in a fake iPhone return scheme.

Essentially, people would take near-worthless fake lookalike iPhone models into the Apple Store, claiming they are faulty and asking for a replacement device. Apple would exchange the unit for a valuable replacement phone, which can then be sold. This procedure was allegedly carried out 16,000 times.

In a little over a week’s time, Apple will unveil iOS 18 and its other new operating system versions, with a heavy focus on bringing AI features to its customers at a system level.

Apple is expected to use a combination of on-device and cloud for AI processing. But customers might need the latest and greatest to be able to use these new features. Mark Gurman writes that many of the upcoming on-device artificial intelligence will require the latest high-end, the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max.

Apple is finally bringing the Apple TV app to Android phones and tablets, as reported by Bloomberg. The company is in the process of hiring engineers to help lead the effort and build out the software. Previously, the company has made an app for the Android smart TV platform, but not Android itself.

Until now, the go-to answer for what should Android phone users do if they want to watch Apple TV+ shows, or enjoy MLS Season Pass, was to use the web experience at tv.apple.com. But obviously, a native app is much more compelling and could support features like offline downloads.

At WWDC, Apple will unveil its AI strategy as part of iOS 18 and its other operating system announcements. As previously reported by Bloomberg and others, the company plans to exploit a combination of on-device and server processing.

However, processing of user data on Apple’s server infrastructures raises privacy concerns, especially when Apple has been touting on-device approach for so many years. Today, The Information explains Apple has what it thinks is a solution to provide rich AI processing abilities in its cloud while maintaining strict privacy standards.

Apple today unveils the trailer for its next big cinema release, Wolfs starring Brad Pitt and George Clooney. The (intentionally awkward grammatically spelled) Wolfs sees the duo in an action comedy where two professional fixers are assigned to the same job.

The pair are forced to work together in a series of events that neither expected. The film is hitting theaters on September 20, and will later stream exclusively on Apple TV+. Watch the trailer below …

A little over a year ago, Apple announced a landmark deal with French cable provider Canal+, which bundled Apple TV+ content at no additional charge. At that time, the way to access the free movies and shows was through Canal’s app.

Fast forward a year, and now Apple and Canal have expanded their partnership further. You can now link your Apple ID with your Canal+ subscription, and unlock the Apple TV+ channel in the Apple TV app itself.

In the latest edition of Mark Gurman’s newsletter for Bloomberg, he reports that Apple’s highly-anticipated AI features for iOS 18 and its other operating systems may be released with a ‘beta’ or ‘preview’ designation.

This is perhaps another sign that Apple was caught off-guard by the AI revolution, and its planned features for this cycle aren’t yet reliable or good enough to launch unqualified, without a beta label.

As reported by Mark Gurman in his latest Power On newsletter, iOS 18 will give users more customization of their iPhone’s home screen. As well as being able to place icons freely, rather than confined to the current fixed aligned grid, Apple will also be unlocking app icon customization as a first-party feature for the first time.

Specifically, Gurman reports that iOS 18 will allow users to “change the color of app icons”. For instance, they could make all their social networking apps have a blue color, and all their finance apps have a blue color.

After being teased by the Comcast CEO last week, the StreamSaver bundle is now official. The bundle can be purchased by Xfinity Internet and TV customers, for $15 per month.

For that price, you get access to Netflix Basic with ads, Peacock Premium (with ads), and Apple TV+ (no ads as Apple does not currently offer an ad-supported tier). Purchased individually, these services would cost about $23 per month.

Apple has launched a limited time promotion, offering boosted trade in values when buying a new iPhone. From now until June 3, customers trading in their iPhone 11 or newer at the Apple Store can get extra credit towards the purchase of their new phone.

The value of the promotion isn’t that dramatic, however. Depending on model, the trade-in amounts have increased by approximately $10-$30 as part of this promotion.