Marcus Mendes

In early 2023, Spotify launched DJ, an interesting feature that leveraged a text-to-speech LLM to deliver… traditional radio, pretty much.

Now, Spotify has announced that, much like traditional radio, DJ can also take requests.

Last week, Israeli firm NSO Group, best known for its Pegasus spyware targeting iPhones and Android devices, was ordered to pay Meta more than $167M for targeting WhatsApp users.

Now, TechCrunch has published an interesting report based on the 1,000+ page transcript of the trial.

Today, TikTok announced AI Alive, an AI filter that will allow users to animate static photos through prompts. ByteDance says that this new image-to-video feature undergoes multiple checks to avoid misuse, and its output will be labeled as AI-generated.

Here’s how to use it.

Since the DMA took effect in Europe, Apple has been forced to loosen its grip by allowing third-party access to its platforms, devices, and operating systems.

One key example is the iPhone’s NFC chip, which was once locked to Apple Pay but is now required to support third-party payment providers. It took longer than one would have guessed, but now PayPal is taking advantage of this wider access.

Apple’s Machine Learning team, in collaboration with researchers from Nanjing University and The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, has announced an interesting 3D AI model called Matrix3D.

This so-called Large Photogrammetry Model is able to reconstruct 3D objects and scenes from just a few 2D photos, but with a big difference from current pipelines. Here’s why this is a big deal.

If the latest reports are correct, Apple is just a few months away from announcing its thinnest iPhone ever. The so‑called iPhone 17 Air is expected to be just 5.5 mm thick, feature a 6.6‑inch OLED display, and replace the iPhone 16 Plus in this year’s lineup.

So, naturally, Samsung has just announced an ultra‑thin phone of its own.

If you have never listened to PJ Vogt’s Search Engine podcast, you are missing out. Vogt is one of the most inquisitive minds out there. He can turn any seemingly inane fact into an intricate story that often leads to unexpected places.

Recently, he came across a strange fact: iPhone audio messages mentioning the name of a specific restaurant chain wouldn’t get delivered. He set out to find out why, and he did it. Sort of.

Apple has updated the AppKit documentation to inform developers about a significant change coming to the macOS pasteboard, the system-level mechanism for transferring data between applications and Apple devices.

Here’s how it’s going to work:

A little more than five years ago, in the early hours of my birthday, no less, I woke up to what I thought was that intense and prolonged alert that the Apple Watch gives you when it’s about to go dead.

That wasn’t it.

For the past few months, there have been plenty of rumors and reports about Apple’s plans to release AI-enabled wearables. Currently, it looks like Apple’s direct competitors to the Meta Ray-Bans will be launched around 2027, alongside AirPods with cameras, which will offer their own set of AI-enabled features.

While it might be too early to know what exactly they will look like, Apple has just offered a peek at how their AI might work.

To say that Apple has been struggling in the Chinese market is an understatement. Including the most recent fiscal quarter, in which the company reported a 2% year-over-year revenue drop in the country, Apple has seen its numbers stay in the green for only three of the last twelve fiscal quarters. That includes an 11% drop in Q1 2025 and a whopping 13% drop in Q1 2024.

When it comes to the smartphone market, however, Apple isn’t the only non-Chinese company that’s been having it rough.

Following a significant defeat in the U.S. on its case against Epic Games, Apple was just dealt another blow, this time in Brazil. Last March, the company successfully reversed a decision that would have compelled it to enable sideloading for users in Brazil within 90 days. The decision stemmed from an antitrust ruling that declared the App Store’s anti-steering rules illegal.

Today, the decision was reversed once again.

One of the few useful Apple Intelligence features that have actually made it to Mac users so far is Writing Tools. They offer a quick (albeit imperfect) way to proofread, change, summarize, or compose text with a mixture of Apple’s own models and OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

However, there is a clever workaround to address one of its most annoying shortcomings.

Apple Pay and the iPhone’s NFC sensor have long been the subject of disputes around the globe. Last year, the European Commission compelled Apple to grant developers access to the NFC reader, and more recently, the company expanded this access in other regions due to increasing regulatory pressure.

Now, a new national payment system in Brazil has a regulatory body taking an even closer look at the iPhone’s NFC, and it appears the company isn’t willing to budge.

In early April, Brazilian business magazine Exame reported that Apple was looking to increase iPhone assembly at both Foxconn facilities in Jundiaí, São Paulo, as a workaround to President Trump’s tariffs, which Apple denied.

Now, Exame is doubling down on its original report.