Author

Marcus Mendes is a Brazilian tech podcaster and journalist who has been closely following Apple since the mid-2000s.

He began covering Apple news in Brazilian media in 2012 and later broadened his focus to the wider tech industry, hosting a daily podcast for seven years.

Today, Marcus co-hosts several tech-focused shows at Gigahertz FM, a Brazilian podcast network he co-founded in 2022 with 9to5Mac’s own Guilherme Rambo. Outside of Gigahertz FM, he also hosts IA Sob Controle, a podcast featuring in-depth interviews and news about artificial intelligence.

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Microsoft Build 2025: Three highlights Apple should pay attention to

Microsoft Copilot Pro

Yesterday, Microsoft kicked off its annual developers conference with, unsurprisingly, a slew of AI features, models, and capabilities it is bringing to its own systems, many of which developers will also be able to leverage.

While some are very specific to Microsoft’s ecosystem, there were quite a few that would undoubtedly be a great addition to Apple’s own native AI offerings, whenever those finally materialize.

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Apple’s use of fake data to train AI is not as weird as it sounds, here’s why

iOS 26 Apple Intelligence

Last weekend, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman and Drake Bennett published a comprehensive look into what went wrong with Apple Intelligence.

The piece details everything from years-long oversights to a deep misunderstanding of AI’s potential at the company’s highest levels. But more importantly, it also outlines what Apple is doing now to catch up. One of those efforts? A push into synthetic data.

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Apple to let developers build with its AI models starting at WWDC 2025

According to a new report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple will announce at WWDC on June 9 that it will open its Apple Intelligence AI models to third-party developers.

A new software development kit and related frameworks will allow apps to integrate and build upon the same large language models that Apple uses across iOS, iPadOS, and macOS.

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iOS 19: Three features you’ll actually use on your iPhone

ios 19 features

WWDC 2025 is fast approaching, and it looks like iOS will once again be the highlight of the year. While there is some controversy about what exactly the system will look like when Apple unveils what’s purported to be the most significant visual change since iOS 7, a few leaks suggest the update could go well beyond just a new coat of paint.

Here are three iOS 19 features that will actually matter in your day-to-day.

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Zheng Qinwen in the new Powerbeats Pro 2 ad.

Athlete Zheng Qinwen stars in new Powerbeats Pro 2 campaign

Earlier in the year, Beats launched the Powerbeats Pro 2, the first Apple earbuds to feature in-ear heart rate monitoring. The debut was accompanied by the “Listen to Your Heart” campaign, voiced by RZA and starring LeBron James, Lionel Messi, and Shohei Ohtani.

Now, Beats is back with a new ad featuring Chinese tennis star and Olympic gold medalist Zheng Qinwen, affectionately known as “Queen Wen.” The ad marks her first major appearance since becoming a global ambassador for the brand earlier this year.

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Epic Games is trying to scheme its way back into the App Store, and it might just work

If there’s one constant in the lustrum-long Epic Games v. Apple lawsuit, it’s that Tim Sweeney, Epic’s CEO, tends to… get creative when it comes to publicly interpreting and promoting the company’s legal wins.

Late last Friday, Epic once again tried to spin a limited courtroom victory into a public-relations campaign. Now, it has been granted a chance to make the antics fly in court.

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Feeling nostalgic? Mac Themes Garden has you covered

Kaleidoscope scheme items on the default Mac OS 9 background. Credits: Mac Themes Garden and Eugene Jones

If the word Kaleidoscope means anything to you, you’re in for a treat. As spotted by Rob Beschizza (via BoingBoing), Mac Themes Garden features a collection of nearly 4,000 Classic Mac OS GUI customizations.

The site is a collection of pixelated bliss, and whether you’re already feeling fuzzy inside or have no idea what I’m talking about, you won’t want to miss out on this.

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Apple research tackles the English accent of AI

The Apple Intelligence survey is meaningless, but we will pay for it

Ask any non-native English speaker, and they’ll probably tell you that LLMs tend to perform much better in Shakespeare’s language than in their own

Sometimes, the difference is subtle. Sometimes, not so much. Sometimes, it’s downright dangerous, as shown in this 2023 Carnegie Mellon study, which found that non-English inputs could more easily bypass safety filters.

Now, Apple has co-authored a study proposing a new method that could close part of this gap.

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Pretend you’re Phil Schiller: would you let Fortnite back on the App Store?

If you closely follow Apple’s inner workings (and since you’re here, I’m guessing you do), you know Phil Schiller has always been known for his unrelenting and fierce protectiveness of Apple and the App Store.

This is why perhaps the most surprising aspect of Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers’s recent scathing order to Apple in the Epic Games case was how Schiller emerged as the uncompromising good cop within the circular walls of Apple Park.

But here’s the thing: outwardly, Schiller is still Schiller.

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iOS 19: The one small feature I hope to see at WWDC

iOS 19 hero

We are less than a month away from WWDC 2025, where Apple is set to announce a redesigned and less glitchy iOS 19 alongside what it’s been cooking over the past year for its other operating systems.

While rumors abound regarding what’s to come to iOS 19, there’s one feature I hope to see make its way into the new system. Sadly, it’s probably not going to happen.

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Apple still the world’s most valuable brand, per new Kantar report

Apple Park | AAPL (9to5Mac image)

Going on 20 years now, Kantar has released its BrandZ Most Valuable Global Brands report, which combines financial data with consumer perception metrics to find the world’s 100 most valuable brands.

In a year in which the total value of the Top 100 reached an all-time high of $10.7 trillion (a 29% jump from last year), Apple has once again led the pack.

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SmartGym: major update adds custom goals, live heart rate tracking and even more personalization

SmartGym May 2025 update

As I mentioned recently, SmartGym has become one of my favorite apps.

Anyone who uses it as a workout companion can easily see why it was named Apple Watch App of the Year in 2023, chosen as a finalist for the Apple Design Awards, and recently featured by Apple as one of the best apps optimized for iOS 18.

Now, the app just got even better, with its biggest update yet.

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Apple Intelligence: Three features Apple needs to copy from the competition

iOS 26 Apple Intelligence

Considering the host of AI features Apple promised at last year’s WWDC, here we are one year later, and the company seems even further behind the competition than it did last June.

To call the Apple Intelligence rollout a blunder is quite an understatement. However, I am hopeful that in a few weeks, we might see a few new features (or maybe concepts of a plan) that may actually make it feel like the company might catch up:

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