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.
Says Luka Doncic, talking to ESPN’s Malika Andrews about the iPhone he threw after finding out he’d been traded from the Dallas Mavericks to the Los Angeles Lakers earlier this year. The back glass is cracked, but Luka is still using it.
Is “bar” even the right word to describe it? If this actually is what the iPhone 17 Pro looks like, I guess we’ll see what Apple calls it.
Three excellent pieces by Mark Gurman, John Gruber, and Ben Thompson recently published that explain why Apple can’t move iPhone production back to the USA. There is no tariff percentage that will result in a US-based “army of millions and millions of human beings screwing in little screws to make iPhones.” As Steve Jobs told President Obama back in 2011, “those jobs aren’t coming back.”
Apple’s “short-term” solution to Trump’s tariffs may be upping its iPhone exports from India, where the 26 percent tariff is about half of China’s. The company is on track to make 25 million phones there this year, with 10 million for the local market, but might redirect more to the US.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple sees the situation as “too uncertain” to alter its manufacturing plans just yet though.
Attorney General Pam Bondi sent Apple a letter “telling the company it should follow President Donald Trump’s executive order” extending ByteDance’s deadline to sell TikTok by 75 more days, reports Bloomberg. The outlet had reported a similar letter sent to both Google and Apple prior to their decision to restore the app to their online marketplaces in February, too.
The automaker’s bigger EX90 EV got CarKey last year, and now Volvo is adding it to the smaller EX30. Volvo’s software rollout on the EX90 has been buggy, with features like CarPlay arriving slowly and owners complaining that their digital keys don’t work.
Sebastiaan de With from the Halide / Lux Camera team reviewed the iPhone 16e’s camera, and he captured some really great shots. Loved reading this.
After admitting that AI-powered upgrades to Siri are taking “longer than we thought,” Apple has added a disclaimer to its iPhone 16, 16E, and 16 Pro product pages warning that some features “will be available with a future software update.”
There was no disclaimer on the site last week, even though the features were just as unavailable then. Apple has also pulled an iPhone 16 ad focused on the unreleased upgrades.
A new batch of Apple security updates today that includes iOS 18.3.2 and macOS 15.3.2 might re-enable Apple Intelligence (again), but it also supplements an issue first addressed in iOS 17.2, where “Maliciously crafted web content may be able to break out of Web Content sandbox,” according to an Apple update note spotted by 9to5Mac.
In the now-private YouTube video, The Last of Us star Bella Ramsey is shown asking Siri “the name of the person they had a meeting with the previous month at a specific restaurant,” as 9to5Mac puts it.
That sort of capability isn’t coming soon after Apple delayed its Siri AI upgrade on Friday, with a Bloomberg rumor suggesting its features could get scrapped and rebuilt entirely.
Supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo says Apple’s first foldable will drop Face ID and add a Touch ID button instead, to help hit 4.5–4.8mm unfolded thickness (close to the 4.2mm world’s thinnest). He expects two rear cameras, a late 2026 launch, and a price tag north of $2,000. Just take it with a pinch of salt, as Kuo says Apple hasn’t finalized the specs yet — not to mention he’s been wrong about their foldables before.
As MacRumors points out, with today’s iPad announcements and the recent iPhone 16E launch, Apple no longer sells new iPhones or iPads with 64GB of base storage. Finally.
[macrumors.com]
Some Mint Mobile users on Reddit found that they can enable RCS on the second iOS 18.4 developer beta, Android Authority reports. Another Redditor says the beta could enable RCS for other T-Mobile MVNOs, too.
[androidauthority.com]
The team at iFixit has exposed the guts — and big battery — of Apple’s newly-launched iPhone 16E in a new video. The video also shows that Apple has brought over the iPhone 16’s electrically charged battery replacement process to its newest phone. And if you’d prefer to see the text teardown with photos, here’s a link to that.
Update: Added link to text teardown.
Two weeks after Apple announced its first 5G modem touting unmatched power efficiency in the iPhone 16E, its former supplier has announced its 8th gen 5G modem-to-antenna solution which includes mmWave support for gigabit throughput unlike Apple’s C1 modem. The Qualcomm X85 5G Modem-RF “sets new standards for 5G and gives connectivity leadership to the Android ecosystem.”
7
Verge Score
The new row comes courtesy of Apple’s latest iOS 18.4 beta, but it only seems to show up on cars with larger displays. A welcome change while we wait for CarPlay 2 to arrive... someday.
The iOS 18.4 beta adds a new Ambient Music category to the Control Center, bringing Chill, Productivity, Sleep, and Wellbeing buttons that let you start an Apple Music playlist with a swipe and tap.
They’re linked to a playlist by default, but 9to5Mac reports you can customize them to kick off any playlist in your library and assign one to the Action Button.
“Ultimate TayTay,” your time has come.
