Author: News Room

I wasn’t among the first to install the iOS 27 developer beta, but once I did, I began appreciating the changes Apple has made. The Photos app, in particular, has received one of its most substantial upgrades, adding an improved Clean Up tool, Spatial Reframing, and the new Extend feature, the one I was most eager to try.  After spending some time with it on my iPhone 17, here’s how the tool has performed so far. Spoiler alert: it’s one of the most substantial additions to Apple’s previously slim lineup of AI features. I’ve tried the feature on several different…

There are already plenty of mental-health chatbots online, but they all run into the same problem. The user still has to reach out first. That is not always easy when someone is stressed, anxious, overwhelmed, or simply unsure how to put their feelings into words. Researchers at the University of Ottawa are working on a different kind of AI assistant. It is designed to read emotional cues in real time through signals from devices people already use, including smartwatches, smartphones, and earbuds. It does more than wait for a message The system is called UbiMyTherapist, short for “You Be My…

I bought the Kodak Charmera partly because I wanted a portable digital camera, and partly because I wanted a pretty little collectible. The Charmera is sold as a blind box, so you do not know which version you are getting until the box is opened. There are multiple retro Kodak-style designs, plus a transparent secret edition that looks like the one everyone would want. I had the shopkeeper pick my box for better luck, and it worked out. I got the yellow variant, which is inspired by Kodak’s original 80s disposable camera. The transparent one is definitely the fun collector’s…

Apple’s Mac RAM upgrades were already expensive enough to raise eyebrows. After the company’s latest round of price hikes, some of them now look ridiculous. Apple recently raised prices across its Mac and iPad lineup, along with other products, citing rising memory and storage costs. The supply crunch is real, but Mac buyers were paying steep premiums for RAM and SSD upgrades long before this jump. Recent MacBook Pro configuration screenshots shared by 9to5Mac show how much worse the upgrade path has become. Apple was already charging a heavy premium The screenshots show a MacBook Pro configuration where 48GB of…

Anthropic’s AI restrictions may finally be starting to thaw. After being forced offline earlier this month over U.S. government security concerns, the company’s most advanced AI models are slowly making a comeback. According to a new report from Axios, Anthropic has already restored Mythos 5 for a limited number of trusted users, while Fable 5 could return as early as next week if ongoing discussions with federal agencies continue to progress. Mythos returns first, while Fable waits in the wings According to Axios, the U.S. Commerce Department has cleared Anthropic to restore access to Mythos 5, its strongest cybersecurity-focused AI…

Apple’s Mac and iPad prices went up this week, by a good margin, no less, and the memory crisis behind them isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.  The obvious next question is what happens to the iPhone 18 Pro, which is expected to arrive later this year. IDC has an answer, and you might not like it (via MacRumors). So what exactly is IDC predicting for iPhone 18 Pro pricing? The Senior Director of Data and Analytics at IDC, Nabila Popal, says Apple’s recent price increases have significantly raised IDC’s price estimate for the iPhone 18 Pro models.  Previously, the research…

Plastic bottles usually end up being recycled into lower-value products, buried in landfills, or worse, polluting the environment. But researchers at Penn State University believe they could one day power electric vehicles, smartphones, and even renewable energy storage systems after discovering a way to convert discarded plastic into high-quality battery graphite. Turning plastic waste into battery-grade graphite According to Penn State, the team converted discarded PET (polyethylene terephthalate) plastic, the material commonly used in water and soft drink bottles, into highly ordered synthetic graphite. Graphite serves as the anode inside lithium-ion batteries, storing and releasing electrical charge, making it one…

A few days ago, Apple announced an ugly mid-cycle price hike, blaming the worsening-by-the-day memory crisis. According to the Financial Times, the company is now lobbying the government for approval to buy memory chips from a Chinese company.  The company in question is CXMT, a Chinese chipmaker that the Pentagon added to its Chinese Military Company blacklist for alleged ties to the Chinese army. So what exactly is Apple asking for here? Apple is not legally barred from sourcing chips from a Chinese supplier. What it wants, however, is the White House’s nod to do so without the reputational and…

Apple Books has long been viewed as a cleaner alternative to Amazon’s Kindle Store. But if a new investigation is anything to go by, it may be fighting the same battle against AI-generated junk. In a recent YouTube Shorts video, The Wall Street Journal’s Joanna Stern revealed that fake, AI-generated versions of her book have repeatedly appeared on Apple Books, despite being reported and removed. Joanna Stern says fake copies keep coming back As highlighted in the video below, Stern discovered multiple AI-generated books impersonating her work on Apple’s digital bookstore. The fake titles copied her name, mimicked the cover…

A fresh iPhone 18 Pro leak is making the rounds online, and it comes with some pretty bold claims. According to leaker Reptalicant, the alleged motherboard for Apple’s upcoming flagship reveals a redesigned A20 Pro chip package with improved cooling, a beefier Neural Engine, and faster memory. That’s a lot to unpack, especially considering motherboard-level Apple leaks like this are exceptionally rare. The leak claims better thermals, faster memory, and a stronger NPU According to the post, Apple is said to be moving the DRAM to the side of the A20 Pro package using WMCM (Wafer-Level Multi-Chip Module) packaging instead…