Benjamin Mayo

Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman yesterday reported that Apple’s new Siri initiative was facing internal delays, having originally been planned to start rolling out with iOS 26.4. Gurman suggested features may start appearing in iOS 26.5, or later releases in the year.

That report has seemingly rocked investor confidence, with Apple stock plummeting today. Seemingly in response, CNBC’s Steve Kovach says Apple confirmed to him that it remains on track to launch new Siri this year, which is essentially reaffirming what it has promised publicly all along.

It is common knowledge that communicating over WiFi is more efficient than using the 5G cellular network, but by how much exactly? That’s exactly what PhoneBuff set out to measure in its latest battery life benchmark test.

Using an iPhone 17 Pro Max, the test simulated general phone usage including texting, web browsing, streaming video, Instagram and FaceTime. Once on 5G, once on WiFi. The final timings are perhaps closer than you’d think.

About a month ahead of first Grand Prix of the season, Formula 1 fans can now link their Apple TV account with F1.TV, in order to start enjoying the F1.TV platform at the Premium tier at no extra charge; Premium used to cost $129 per year.

This rollout is part of Apple’s exclusive streaming partnership deal with Formula 1 in the United States. To get started, sign up to Apple TV here and then go here to link it to your F1.TV account.

In the future, Apple users should expect more paid upgrades and subscription bundles just like what the company launched with Apple Creator Studio last month. As said by Mark Gurman in this week’s Power On newsletter, “I believe Apple is looking at all areas of its software and services” for further services monetization opportunities.

Obviously, the appeal of more subscription bundles depends on the particulars. For instance, Apple One has been very popular and seems relatively consumer friendly. But, while Creator Studio is a reasonable deal for hardcore users of Final Cut and Logic Pro, it also introduced exclusive paid features and upsell banners into Apple’s previously free-with-no-asterisks iWork suite of Pages, Keynote and Numbers.

The new generation of Apple AirTag finally landed this week, almost five years after the convenient item tracker accessory first debuted in 2021. 

You’d be hard pressed to tell the AirTag 2 — technically the ‘AirTag (second-generation)’ — apart from the first version, by eye. But inside, it packs in some meaningful upgrades that make this tracker even better at finding your misplaced items … 

The hit comedy Ted Lasso is (almost) back. Apple TV has announced that season four will being airing later this year. The highly-anticipated summer release sees the return of star Jason Sudeikis as Ted, Brendan Hunt as Coach Beard, Hannah Waddingham as Rebecca, Brett Goldstein as Roy Kent, and more familiar faces.

In this season, Ted Lasso is set on a new mission, as coach of a women’s team. Production is still ongoing right now, but Apple is confident enough to confirm the summer 2026 release date anyway.

At the end of last year, Apple announced that it was expanding App Store search ads beyond the single promoted placement at the top of the results. Instead, developer paying for promotion in App Store search can now have their apps appear further down the search results list, mixed in with the usual stream of organic results.

Apple has now confirmed that this will go into effect beginning March 3, starting the UK and Japan, with a rollout across all Apple Ads markets by the end of the month.

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.

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 …

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 …

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.

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.

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.

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 …

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.

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 …

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.

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.

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.

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 …

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.