Over the past ten years, Apple’s iPhone has become the company’s most valuable —and recently, somewhat volatile— asset. Since its introduction in 2007, the iPhone helped to jumpstart the smartphone revolution, and with it came some big innovations. The App Store, touchscreen gaming, the mass adoption of social media, and protecting user data with biometrics. Its product lineup is enmeshed in Apple’s ecosystem, and the impact that it continues to have around the globe is vast.
Leveraging new iOS 18 features allowing for more customizability when arranging apps (including hiding their names) Kristin Moore designs custom wallpapers that turn iPhone home screens into bookshelves, as spotted by 9to5Mac.
They’ve already shared a few bookshelf wallpapers on Threads, but you can order a custom design through their Etsy shop, or buy a template to customize your own.
A Threads post that I recently saw opened my eyes to a fun trick with Apple’s iOS 18 iMessage effects: You can make little emoji / ASCII-style animations with them.
I lost the original post (if that was you, let me know!), but I immediately used the idea. If you’ve done this, feel free to share your best ones. Below is a gallery of mine.
It has zero bearing on the experience of actually using your phone, but I agree with iFixit that Apple’s choice to explore new battery tech in every iPhone 16 except for the Max is... odd.
The 16 / 16 Plus have a very cool new removal method. The standard Pro’s battery is encased in metal. But the Max? Regular battery like always.
Instead of buying the new iPhone 16, I decided to change the look of my trusty iPhone 15 Pro instead. The name might suck, but I’ve fallen in deep like with the $39.99 Torras 360-degree Ostand R Rotated Stand MagSafe Case anyway.
I had no idea I was a kickstand guy!
Along with Apple Intelligence, the new iOS 18.1 and macOS 15.1 betas introduce a handy new way to transfer files when mirroring your iPhone, as spotted by 9to5Mac. Apple previously said the drag-and-drop capability would arrive later this year.
It lets people who are deaf or hard of hearing feel music through tactile feedback by playing haptic tracks alongside known music when on Wi-Fi or cellular data, which is already supported in Apple Music and Apple Music Classical.
It can also make your iPhone sound like an Atari game.
Mark Gurman writes in his Power On newsletter for Bloomberg that Apple is “racing” to complete the second set of Apple Intelligence features it plans to release this year, lining up Genmoji, ChatGPT, and Image Playground for a December launch with iOS 18.2.
Meanwhile, some Siri updates could launch sooner than previously rumored with 18.3, but the “biggest” update is apparently iOS 18.4, which could arrive in March.
Check out this image from Apple’s battery replacement manual for the iPhone 16. With the 16 and 16 Plus, you can now use electricity to remove the adhesive that keeps the battery in place. That’s just cool as hell.
The 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max are stuck with boring, more traditional pull tabs.
There’s a lot more to the iPhone 16 Pro and the Apple Intelligence-less launch version of iOS 18, but if you need a reason to consider upgrading now, it might be that confusing camera.
Maybe Apple should have waited to do this until next month?
According to Wired:
Principal filming for 28 Years Later wrapped at the end of August, and until now the production has kept under wraps the fact that the movie was shot with smartphones, with the film’s staff being asked to signed NDAs preventing the disclosure of this detail.
I cannot imagine a sicker burn on the new iPhones than this Jimmy Kimmel Live bit (which the show has done before, and always seems to work). The moral of the story, as always: don’t buy a new phone, just take the case off. Instant new phone.
Once you’ve received your UPS tracking number from Apple, use this page to figure out what flight is carrying your iPhone or Apple Watch. The “departure scan” in your UPS tracking should match the departure time for a flight listed below.
Joanna Stern convinced the Wall Street Journal to do something different for her iPhone review this year: they built a chatbot trained on her previous iPhone reviews and her testing notes for the new models. You can, uh, get pretty deep with it.
I’m not saying you should buy a new phone for a single camera setting... but I’m not not saying that, either.
It’s a good year for Apple’s basic iPhone, even if its AI is MIA.
The device already supports spatial video, but the latest iOS 18.1 developer beta brings spatial photos to the iPhone 15 Pro too. This allows for a more immersive experience when viewing photos on Apple’s Vision Pro headset.
The iPhone 16 will also come with support for spatial photos and videos when it launches later this week.
Former Bloomberg reporter Tim Culpan writes on Substack:
Apple’s A16 SoC, which first debuted two years ago in the iPhone 14 Pro, is currently being manufactured at Phase 1 of TSMC’s Fab 21 in Arizona in small, but significant, numbers, my sources tell me.
They’re only used in the iPhone 14 Pro and standard iPhone 15 right now, but maybe the American-made chips Apple signed up for will end up in a future iPhone SE someday. The question is if it’s worth the costs.
[timculpan.substack.com]
Our own Parker Ortolani whipped up a couple of nice iOS 18-friendly icons, so all you need to do is download one and use it with a Shortcut that points to your very favorite tech website. Looks great on my homescreen!
I was reminded this morning that Apple added a new “Music Haptics” accessibility feature to iOS 18, which I hadn’t actually tried out yet, that subtly vibrates along to songs for those affected by hearing loss to feel.
Putting it on a box is fun!
