Ben Lovejoy

Apple has long been rumored to be working on a significant improvement to the main iPhone camera in the form of a variable aperture lens. Some reports claimed that this would be introduced in the iPhone 17, but this of course didn’t happen.

Ming-Chi Kuo first reported plans to introduce the feature in the iPhone 18, and this has now been corroborated by a supply chain report which says that work is already underway on the new hardware …

Apple is lobbying for a change in the tax law in India as it potentially faces billions of dollars in taxes for new iPhone assembly equipment.

Some 25% of iPhones are now made in India, and the company is looking to push this percentage even higher, but there is a potential major barrier to further expansion …

All Spotify-using parents know the pain of seeing their recommendations and Spotify Wrapped list destroyed by music played for or by their kids. The company has been piloting a solution to this problem and is now rolling it out to the US, UK, Canada and elsewhere.

The Spotify managed account feature essentially ensures that younger listeners get their own sub-accounts, with parents and guardians remaining in control …

The popularity of the iPhone 17 lineup saw Apple almost match Samsung’s market share for the third quarter of the year, according to new IDC data.

The firm describes it as “a remarkable achievement,” attributing the ability to sell even more premium phones in a challenging economy to a combination of three factors …

Apple recently explained how it will comply with an App Store age verification law in Texas, and it will now face a similar requirement in California.

Apple found a privacy-respecting approach to the Texas law, and it seems that it will be able to adopt a similar one here …

Security researchers at two US universities were able to intercept T-Mobile customer call and text data from completely unencrypted satellite communications.

Researchers were also able to eavesdrop on sensitive government communications, including US military and law enforcement agencies – and they did all of it using nothing more than an $800 off-the-shelf satellite receiver system …

Ah, 2010. The year when Apple launched the iPad, but the limelight was stolen by something else entirely: Antennagate. Soon after the launch of the iPhone 4, users discovered that when they held the phone in a typical grip for a phone call, the number of bars shown for signal strength immediately dropped dramatically.

Apple responded in a number of ways, including Steve Jobs famously suggesting that users were holding the phone wrong, but the issue was resolved by changing just 20 bytes of code …

Although Apple is on record as saying that it wants to see the EU’s Digital Markets Act either repealed or substantially revised, it is reportedly close to reaching a settlement with the antitrust regulator.

In public, the two have engaged in a pretty fierce war of words, but a new report claims that they are close to reaching a behind-the-scenes agreement …

The controversy over Apple removing ICEBlock from the App Store is showing no signs of ending. The latest development is a former Apple marketing veteran challenging Tim Cook on the company’s human rights values.

Wiley Hodges worked for Apple for more than 20 years, the last 15 of them as a director of marketing and product management, and he’s written an open letter to Cook expressing his dismay at the decision …

The secretive AI hardware device designed by former Apple design chief Jony Ive and set to be launched by ChatGPT maker OpenAI has reportedly been delayed, as the company struggles to solve three fundamental problems.

Update: Ive referenced a “family of devices” and said that they had come up with “15-20 really compelling” product ideas – more below …

A new Apple short film called The Underdogs: Blue Screen of Death has been posted to the company’s YouTube channel as part of an occasional series that was first launched back in 2019.

Eight minutes long, it’s a gentle comedy that highlights the built-in security features of Macs while also showing off a whole range of the company’s ecosystem features …

Every now and then there is an app or utility whose usefulness is so obvious that you immediately think it ought to be part of macOS.

Folder Quick Look is a great example of this. It does one very simple job – and does it in a way that just seems like it has always been there …

I may not be a fan personally, but plenty of people seem to love the new Cosmic Orange colour option for the iPhone 17 Pro. While the color is officially exclusive to just two phones, you can now have any of your devices in this color.

Dbrand skins are now available in the new color for a wide range of devices, including the iPhone Air, MacBooks, iPads, AirPods, and even Android phones and Windows laptops …

We hear occasional good news stories where somebody is able to use Find My iPhone to track a stolen device and successfully recover it, but a new record has been set when tracking a single iPhone led to a gang suspected of smuggling up to 40,000 stolen phones to China.

The iPhone was tracked to an airport warehouse where it was found in a box with 894 other phones, leading to the arrest of 18 suspects and more than 2,000 recovered phones …

Apple is facing a cybercrime investigation in France over its capture and review of voice recordings to improve the quality of Siri responses.

The probe faces complaints by a human rights organization over a 2019 revelation that Apple was using contractors to listen to voice recordings of Siri interactions by its customers despite its privacy promises …

Apple has gradually ramped up the capabilities of its iPhone satellite communications services, but a new report suggests that the company may need to switch supplier in order to boost capacity.

The company currently partners with Globalstar for all of its satellite comms services, but two SpaceX developments mean that Apple might switch to Starlink for future services …

While OpenAI describes its latest iPhone app Sora as a video generation tool, it might be more accurately described as a way for anyone to easily create deepfakes.

You did get to choose whether or not people can use your cameo, aka your likeness, but you initially had almost no control over what they could do with it. Predictably, this did not go well, and the company has now introduced a new safety tool …

When it comes to favorite technology, Apple gets a double win from me. My MacBook Pro is my single most important piece of tech, and the Apple ecosystem is absolutely core to my approach to a whole range of things, across both work and leisure.

But I also have a number of non-Apple devices that either serve as important accessories or standalone devices in their own right …

We’ve for some time been expecting a cheaper and lighter version of Vision Pro, possibly branded as Vision Air. Potential launch dates have been variously reported as 2025, 2026, and 2027.

But a report yesterday suggested we may have even longer to wait for this as Apple shifts resources to accelerate work on an Apple Glasses product …

Direct payments between Venmo and PayPal will finally become possible from November, some 11 years after it was first expected.

While some may find it convenient, it also opens a new route to scammers, so there’s a privacy setting you may wish to change when it goes live …

Neon, the app that pays you to share your audio recordings with an AI system, says that it will return despite its recent massive security breach.

The app shot up the App Store ratings after promising to pay users hundreds or even thousands of dollars per year for allowing their audio conversations to be used to train AI chatbots …