Benjamin Mayo

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.

Corroborating previous reports, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo today tweeted his expectations for the iPhone 16 color lineup. For the Pro series, the blue titanium is being replaced by a new rose color.

In sum, that would make the new Pro lineup composed of black, white/silver, rose and natural titanium options. For the base iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus, Kuo expects black, white, green, pink, and blue colorways.

The new iPad Pro is here and the inevitable YouTube stress tests are already online. JerryRigEverything and AppleTrack posted their bend test videos, and both seemingly came to the same conclusion: the new iPad Pro holds up well to extreme force and seems pretty resistant to bending during normal use.

AppleTrack repeated the same bends with the M2 iPad Pro and the new M4 iPad Pro to compare, and whereas the M4 iPad Pro came away almost unscathed, the M2 iPad Pro had a definitive curl in the corner near the cameras. JerryRigEverything praised the device for its “black magic levels of structural integrity”, at least when bent horizontally.

Apple today announced new accessibility features that will debut later this year in iOS 18 and its other operating systems (although as usual, Apple does not specifically refer to ‘iOS 18’ prematurely).

The headline addition is Eye Tracking, which will allow iPhone and iPad users with physical disabilities to control their devices just by looking at it with their eyes, with a new iOS gaze system somewhat similar to Vision Pro. Other new features include music haptics, Vehicle Motion Cues, and more …

The trio of Apple TV+, Netflix and Peacock are to be packaged in a new streaming TV bundle option, as teased by Comcast CEO Brian Roberts at a conference today.

More details about the bundle offering will be revealed later this month, but Roberts promised a “vastly reduced” price compared to buying the three services separately.

The new iPad Pro is Apple’s thinnest product ever, with the 13-inch model measuring at just 5.1mm thick (excluding camera bump).

The last time the iPad Pro was redesigned, with the 2018 model, there was a big controversy as people noticed it was relatively easy to bend their iPads, with some arriving bent out of the box. For this ultra-thin redesign, the question of rigidity and durability inevitably has relevance again. But, in an interview with Arun Maini, Apple SVP John Ternus addressed these concerns, noting that the new iPad has a redesigned internal structure meant to improve the device’s stiffness.

The M4 is looking like a very strong generation for Apple Silicon. According to leaked Geekbench scores likely posted by reviewers who already got their hands on the new iPad ahead of next week’s embargo, the new iPad Pro with the M4 chip scores about 3700 in single-core CPU benchmark, and around 14500 in multi-core.

That compares to ~3100 and ~12000 for the M3 MacBook Air, which Apple only just shipped in March. The new iPad Pro bests the Air by about 20%, an impressive generational jump, at least in these benchmark results.

Apple is preparing to unveil a major revamp to Siri at WWDC in June, as reported by The New York Times today.

The report says the new version of Siri will be powered by generative AI, allowing it to be more conversational and understand more types of requests. Rather than focus on open-ended requests like a loquacious ChatGPT clone, Apple is using the new foundations to make Siri better at handling tasks like setting timers, creating reminders and more.

Apple Music today launched new Shazam-powered playlists that track what is being played the most across terrestrial broadcast radio stations. The Radio Spins charts are also available on the Shazam website.

Using their music recognition technology, Shazam is now logging what songs are being played on tens of thousands of radio stations worldwide, to help users discover more insights about what music is trending globally.

Based on the book by Blake Crouch, Dark Matter is a new sci-fi drama series that starts streaming today on Apple TV+. It is written by the author of the novel, and stars Joel Edgerton in the lead role as Jason.

Jason, a physicist and teacher, is abducted into an alternate reality in which he gets a glimpse of other ways his life could have gone. Intrigue quickly turns to madness, though, and he must find a way back to save his family from himself.

As well as losing an ultra-wide camera, the new iPad Pro has also dropped support for 5G mmWave.

As seen on the iPad Pro specs page, the M4 iPad Pro supports 5G cellular on sub-6 GHz spectrum only, and LTE on 31 bands. The older cellular iPad Pro could do mmWave and supported one additional LTE band.

While the new iPad Pro with M4 is a major step forward across the board, there a couple gotchas to be aware of. Firstly, with this generation, Apple has removed the ultra-wide camera from the rear camera module altogether.

Also, while Apple touts the performance jump of the 10-core CPU found inside the new M4 chip, that chip variant is exclusive to the 1 TB and 2 TB iPad Pro models. Lower storage iPads get a 9-core CPU. They also have half the RAM …

Alongside the new iPad Pro announcement, Apple today unveiled next-generation versions of Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro for iPad. They are designed to be much more sophisticated and much more capable, to take advantage of the M4 chip performance found in the new iPad Pro.

The new Final Cut Pro 2 for iPad includes live multi-cam editing. Up to four iPhones can record different angles of a scene at the same time, and that footage is streamed into the iPad running Final Cut …

Apple today announced the new 11-inch and 13-inch iPad Pro, as part of its ‘Let Loose’ special event. The new iPad Pro makes the leap to the M4 chip, the next-generation of Apple silicon, for improved performance. Apple touted its new Neural Engine to stress the artificial intelligence capabilities.

The new tablets feature OLED displays, offering richer contrast and brightness, housed in a new thinner industrial design that is significantly smaller and lighter; the 11-inch is 5.3mm thin and the 13-inch is 5.1mm thin, which Apple says makes it the thinnest product they have ever created. The new 11-inch model starts at a higher $999 price point, and the 13-inch model starts at $1299.