Enlarge/ Apple bragged about the thinness of the M4 iPad Pro; it's apparently a template for the company's designs going forward. (credit: Apple)
Though Apple has a reputation for prioritizing thinness in its hardware designs, the company has actually spent the last few years learning to embrace a little extra size and/or weight in its hardware. The Apple Silicon MacBook Pro designs are both thicker and heavier than the Intel-era MacBook Pros they replaced. The MacBook Air gave up its distinctive taper. Even the iPhone 15 Pro was a shade thicker than its predecessor.
But Apple is apparently planning to return to emphasizing thinness in its devices, according to reporting from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman (in a piece that is otherwise mostly about Apple's phased rollout of the AI-powered features it announced at its Worldwide Developers Conference last week).
Gurman's sources say that Apple is planning "a significantly skinnier iPhone in time for the iPhone 17 line in 2025," which presumably means that we can expect the iPhone 16 to continue in the same vein as current iPhone 15 models. The Apple Watch and MacBook Pro are also apparently on the list of devices Apple is trying to make thinner.
On Monday, Apple announced it would be integrating OpenAI's ChatGPT AI assistant into upcoming versions of its iPhone, iPad, and Mac operating systems. It paves the way for future third-party AI model integrations, but given Google's multi-billion-dollar deal with Apple for preferential web search, the OpenAI announcement inspired speculation about who is paying whom. According to a Bloomberg report published Wednesday, Apple considers ChatGPT's placement on its devices as compensation enough.
"Apple isn’t paying OpenAI as part of the partnership," writes Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman, citing people familiar with the matter who wish to remain anonymous. "Instead, Apple believes pushing OpenAI’s brand and technology to hundreds of millions of its devices is of equal or greater value than monetary payments."
The Bloomberg report states that neither company expects the agreement to generate meaningful revenue in the short term, and in fact, the partnership could burn extra money for OpenAI, because it pays Microsoft to host ChatGPT's capabilities on its Azure cloud. However, OpenAI could benefit by converting free users to paid subscriptions, and Apple potentially benefits by providing easy, built-in access to ChatGPT during a time when its own in-house LLMs are still catching up.
I set expectations when she saved up and got the phone – little did I know it would undermine them, and her mental health
The byline on this essay is a pseudonym.
My daughter is one of those kids the US surgeon general warned us about. Our nation’s children are “unknowing participants” in a “decades-long experiment”. Social media usage poses mental health risks to youth, who use it “almost constantly”, causing sleep deprivation, depression and anxiety.
The AI’s errors can still be comical and catastrophic. Do we really want this technology to be in so many pockets?
Tech watchers and nerds like me get excited by tools such as ChatGPT. They look set to improve our lives in many ways – and hopefully augment our jobs rather than replace them.
But in general, the public hasn’t been so enamoured of the AI “revolution”. Make no mistake: artificial intelligence will have a transformative effect on how we live and work – it is already being used to draft legal letters and analyse lung-cancer scans. ChatGPT was also the fastest-growing app in history after it was released. That said, four in 10 Britons haven’t heard of ChatGPT, according to a recent survey by the University of Oxford, and only 9% use it weekly or more frequently.
Chris Stokel-Walker is the author of How AI Ate the World, which was published last month
Apple maintains its in-house AI is made with security in mind, but some professionals say ‘it remains to be seen’
At its annual developers conference on Monday, Apple announced its long-awaited artificial intelligence system, Apple Intelligence, which will customize user experiences, automate tasks and – the CEO Tim Cook promised – will usher in a “new standard for privacy in AI”.
While Apple maintains its in-house AI is made with security in mind, its partnership with OpenAI has sparked plenty of criticism. OpenAI tool ChatGPT has long been the subject of privacy concerns. Launched in November 2022, it collected user data without explicit consent to train its models, and only began to allow users to opt out of such data collection in April 2023.
Enlarge/ He isn't using an iPhone, but some people talk to Siri like this.
On Monday, Apple premiered "Apple Intelligence" during a wide-ranging presentation at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference in Cupertino, California. However, the heart of its new tech, an array of Apple-developed AI models, was overshadowed by the announcement of ChatGPT integration into its device operating systems.
Since rumors of the partnership first emerged, we've seen confusion on social media about why Apple didn't develop a cutting-edge GPT-4-like chatbot internally. Despite Apple's year-long development of its own large language models (LLMs), many perceived the integration of ChatGPT (and opening the door for others, like Google Gemini) as a sign of Apple's lack of innovation.
"This is really strange. Surely Apple could train a very good competing LLM if they wanted? They've had a year," wrote AI developer Benjamin De Kraker on X. Elon Musk has also been grumbling about the OpenAI deal—and spreading misconceptions about it—saying things like, "It’s patently absurd that Apple isn’t smart enough to make their own AI, yet is somehow capable of ensuring that OpenAI will protect your security & privacy!"
Only most powerful iPhones will meet processing requirements to run new Siri and Apple Intelligence features
Apple’s big push into AI – which the company insists stands for “Apple Intelligence” – could spark an upgrade “supercycle”, with the intense processing requirements for the souped-up Siri limiting it to only the most powerful iPhones currently on the market.
The company risks angering users who will update to iOS 18 this autumn to discover that even a brand-new iPhone 15 is unable to run features such as automatic transcription, image generation and a smarter, more conversational voice assistant.
As Apple’s new Passwords app tries to solve our identity crisis, why are we still proving who we are via strings of random characters?
Whether it stands for artificial intelligence or, er, Apple intelligence, AI is the hot news of the day. Which is why I think it’s time to talk about [sits backwards on chair] passwords.
It may have been buried in the reporting of last night’s Apple event – which the inestimable Kari Paul and Nick Robins-Early covered for us from Cupertino and New York – but one of the more consequential changes coming to the company’s platforms in the next year is the creation of a new Passwords app.
The average user probably has never heard of 1Password or LastPass, and they may or may not be aware that the iPhone can automatically create and store passwords for them. For users like that, a new Passwords app showing up on their iPhone’s Home screen this fall is going to hopefully lead them to a more secure computing future.
A mild improvement in your daily life. That’s what Apple, Google and Microsoft are offering, with a fairly rare triple announcement that the three tech giants are all adopting the Fido standard and ushering in a passwordless future. The standard replaces usernames and passwords with ‘passkeys’, log-in information stored directly on your device and only uploaded to the website when matched with biometric authentication like a selfie or fingerprint.
At around 11pm last night my partner went to change our lounge room lights with our home light control system. When she tried to login, her account couldn’t be accessed. Her Apple Keychain had deleted the Passkey she was using on that site … Just like adblockers, I predict that Passkeys will only be used by a small subset of the technical population, and consumers will generally reject them.
Zoom users in the not-too-distant future could send AI avatars to attend meetings in their absence, the company’s chief executive has suggested, delegating the drudge-work of corporate life to a system trained on their own content.
• Phasing out voice based authentication as a security measure for accessing bank accounts and other sensitive information
• Exploring policies to protect the use of individuals’ voices in AI
• Educating the public in understanding the capabilities and limitations of AI technologies, including the possibility of deceptive AI content
Yesterday at WWDC 2024 Apple announced its long-anticipated machine learning effort, a Siri overhaul dubbed "Apple Intelligence." The new system employs LLMs and diffusion model image generation while attempting to maintain a uniquely high level of privacy by splitting queries across three tiers of increasing anonymity and capability: on device, private cloud compute servers, and anonymized opt-in-only ChatGPT calls. Ars coverage on Apple Intelligence, and the ChatGPT integration.
The system will debut in the pending iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia releases and is composed of three separate layers:
1) On device, the primary mode which draws upon all personal information across apps, contacts, conversations, etc. to create a highly-detailed, user-specific context Apple refers to as a "semantic index." In addition to the ability to parse information currently displayed on screen when requested, there is a new developer API so that third-party applications can specify what kind of information Siri can draw from them, and request appropriate generated text and images. The specific information gathered and any derived data or personalized fine-tuning remains on your device, with the limited exception of difficult queries which are handed off to...
2) Private Cloud Compute, a semi-anonymous cloud-based neural network inference service hosted by Apple with exposure of personal data limited specifically to the query at hand, using a cryptographically-signed software stack and operating with a no-data-retention policy. The segment on Private Cloud Compute featured an unusually candid critique of the data harvesting common to machine learning systems by competing tech giants, without specifically naming...
3) OpenAI's ChatGPT, which will be available later this year and only with explicit user opt-in (on each individual query) for queries the new Siri detects as likely to benefit from scale beyond both on-device hardware and Private Cloud Compute. Data sent to OpenAI is heavily anonymized and multi-modal (meaning combined text and images) for asking questions about an image. Apple mentioned that other models may later become available, but did not specify whether this meant Google's Gemini, Facebook's Llama-3, or potentially even self-hosted endpoints based on open source models like Mistral 8x7b.
New features and deal with OpenAI presented at conference marks change in focus for tech giant, which is under pressure to catch up with rival firms’ AI push
Tim Cook, the Apple CEO, announced a series of generative artificial intelligence products and services on Monday during his keynote speech at the company’s annual developer conference, WWDC, including “Apple Intelligence” and a deal with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI.
The new tools mark a major shift toward AI for Apple, which has seen slowing global sales over the past year and integrated fewer AI features into its consumer-facing products than competitors.
Apple's new iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 updates are mostly good news for users of older Apple devices—with the exception of a handful of iPads, the new updates will run on most of the same hardware that can run iOS 17 and iPadOS 17.
For iPhones, that will cover everything from the iPhone XR/XS and newer, including the 2nd-gen iPhone SE; the 7th-gen iPad and newer; the 3rd-gen iPad Air and newer; the 5th-gen iPad mini and newer; all 11-inch iPad Pros; and the 3rd-gen 12.9-inch iPad Pro and later. Here are the full support lists:
The iOS 18 support list. [credit:
Apple ]
The iPad drops support for most models with an Apple A10 or A10X processor, including the sixth-generation iPad, the 10.5-inch iPad Pro, and the second-generation 12.9-inch iPad Pro.
On Monday, Apple debuted "Apple Intelligence," a new suite of free AI-powered features for iOS 18, iPadOS 18, macOS Sequoia that includes creating email summaries, generating images and emoji, and allowing Siri to take actions on your behalf. These features are achieved through a combination of on-device and cloud processing, with a strong emphasis on privacy. Apple says that Apple Intelligence features will be widely available later this year and will be available as a beta test for developers this summer.
The announcements came during a livestream WWDC keynote and a simultaneous event attended by the press on Apple's campus in Cupertino, California. In an introduction, Apple CEO Tim Cook said the company has been using machine learning for years, but the introduction of large language models (LLMs) presents new opportunities to elevate the capabilities of Apple products. He emphasized the need for both personalization and privacy in Apple's approach.
At last year's WWDC, Apple avoided using the term "AI" completely, instead preferring terms like "machine learning" as Apple's way of avoiding buzzy hype while integrating applications of AI into apps in useful ways. This year, Apple figured out a new way to largely avoid the abbreviation "AI" by coining "Apple Intelligence," a catchall branding term that refers to a broad group of machine learning, LLM, and image generation technologies. By our count, the term "AI" was used sparingly in the keynote—most notably near the end of the presentation when Apple executive Craig Federighi said, "It's AI for the rest of us."
The biggest feature in iOS 18, the one that affects the most people, was a single item in a comma-stuffed sentence by Apple software boss Craig Federighi: "Support for RCS."
As we noted when Apple announced its support for "RCS Universal Profile," a kind of minimum viable cross-device rich messaging, iPhone users getting RCS means SMS chains with Android users "will be slightly less awful." SMS messages will soon have read receipts, higher-quality media sending, and typing indicators, along with better security. And RCS messages can go over Wi-Fi when you don't have a cellular signal. Apple is certainly downplaying a major cross-platform compatibility upgrade, but it's a notable quality-of-life boost.
Prioritized notifications through Apple Intelligence
Apple Intelligence, the new Siri, and the iPhone
iOS 18 is one of the major beneficiaries of Apple's AI rollout, dubbed "Apple Intelligence." Apple Intelligence promises to help iPhone users create and understand language and images, with the proper context from your phone's apps: photos, calendar, email, messages, and more.
Apple, a latecomer to artificial intelligence, has struck a deal with OpenAI and developed tools to improve its Siri voice assistant, which it is set to showcase on Monday.
When buying a new smartphone, it's important to consider the duration of software updates, as it impacts security and longevity. In a rare public commitment on Monday, thanks to the UK's new Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure (PSTI) regulations, Apple said it guarantees a minimum of five years of security updates for the iPhone 15 Pro Max. "In other words, the iPhone 15 is officially guaranteed to receive security updates until September 22, 2028," reports Android Authority. From the report: This, as VP of Engineering for Android Security & Privacy at Google Dave Kleidermacher points out, means that Apple is no longer offering the best security update policy in the industry. Both Samsung and Google guarantee seven years of not just security updates but also Android OS updates for their respective flagship devices, which is two years longer than what Apple guarantees.
To Apple's credit, though, it has long provided more than five years of security updates for its various iPhone devices. Some iPhones have received security updates six or more years after the initial release, which is far more support than the vast majority of Android devices receive. So, while Samsung and Google currently beat Apple in terms of how long they're guaranteeing software support, that doesn't mean iPhone users can't keep their phones for just as long, if not longer. They'll just need to hope Apple doesn't cut off support after the five-year minimum.
Lore Olympus, the biggest name in WEBTOON's catalog, has come to an end after 280 installments since beginning six years ago. It retold the story of Hades and Persephone, with subplots of every other Greek myth you can think of, and won the Eisner, Harvey, and Ringo awards multiple times. Also available in print at your local library or comic book store.
People in the US are starting their menstrual cycles earlier and experiencing more irregularities, both of which raise the risk of a host of health problems later in life, according to an Apple women’s health study looking at data from over 70,000 menstruating iPhone users born between 1950 and 2005.
The mean age of people's first period fell from 12.5 years in participants born between 1950 and 1969 to 11.9 years in participants born between 2000 and 2005, with a steady decline in between, the study found. There were also notable changes in the extremes—between 1950 and 2005, the percentage of people who started their periods before age 11 rose from 8.6 percent to 15.5 percent. And the percentage of people who started their periods late (at age 16 or above) dropped from 5.5 percent to 1.7 percent.
In addition to periods shifting to earlier starting ages, menstrual cycles also appeared to become more irregular. For this, researchers looked at how quickly people settled into a regular cycle after the start of their period. Between 1950 and 2005, the percentage of people obtaining regularity within two years fell from 76.3 percent to 56 percent.
It's as weird as it sounds: a young Jeff Jarrett and Dirty Dutch Mantell battle it out in the ring while in the background Walter Mays conducts a live orchestra performing his original composition, "War Games for Ten Percussionists and Two Wrestlers, " for broadcast on PBS of all channels. The actual match is pretty basic with a standard "heel dominates, babyface gets some hope spots, and finally makes a comeback" format - at one point Mantell attacks a plant in the orchestra after trying to take a drum; otherwise it's pretty by-the-numbers - which was probably a wise choice to give an audience likely largely composed of non-wrestling fans something easy to follow. (In a then-rare kayfabe-breaking moment, the extra Mantell attacks - played by Memphis wrestler Marc "The Beast" Guleen - is listed as a third wrestler in the program's end credits.) It's interesting to see this sort of high-concept wrestling content as early as 1989, as this seems more like something you'd see tried nowadays - and maybe somebody should try doing it again. While the in-ring action is simply adequate, the idea behind it gets it an extra point for creativity in my book.
You’ve likely felt it: The dull pull downwards of a smartphone scroll. The “five more minutes” just before bed. The sleep still there after waking. The edges of your calm slowly fraying.
After more than a decade of our most recent technological experiment, in turns out that having the entirety of the internet in the palm of your hands could be … not so great. Obviously, the effects of this are compounded by the fact that the internet that was built after the invention of the smartphone is a very different internet than the one before—supercharged with algorithms that get you to click more, watch more, buy more, and rest so much less.
But for one group, in particular, across the world, the impact of smartphones and constant social media may be causing an unprecedented mental health crisis: Young people.
According to the American College Health Association, the percentage of undergraduates in the US—so, mainly young adults in college—who were diagnosed with anxiety increased 134% since 2010. In the same time period for the same group, there was in increase in diagnoses of depression by 106%, ADHD by 72%, bipolar by 57%, and anorexia by 100%.
That’s not all. According to a US National Survey on Drug Use and Health, the prevalence of anxiety in America increased for every age group except those over 50, again, since 2010. Those aged 35 – 49 experienced a 52% increase, those aged 26 – 34 experienced a 103% increase, and those aged 18 – 25 experienced a 139% increase.
This data, and much more, was cited by the social psychologist and author Jonathan Haidt, in debuting his latest book, “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness.” In the book, Haidt examines what he believes is a mental health crisis unique amongst today’s youth, and he proposes that much of the crisis has been brought about by a change in childhood—away from a “play-based” childhood and into a “phone-based” one.
This shift, Haidt argues, is largely to blame for the increased rates of anxiety, depression, suicidality, and more.
And rather than just naming the problem, Haidt also proposes five solutions to turn things around:
Give children far more time playing with other children.
Look for more ways to embed children in stable real-world communities.
Don’t give a smartphone as the first phone.
Don’t give a smartphone until high school.
Delay the opening of accounts on nearly all social media platforms until the beginning of high school (at least).
Writing for the outlet Platformer, reporter Zoe Schiffer spoke with multiple behavioral psychologists who alleged that Haidt’s book cherry-picks survey data, ignores mental health crises amongst adults, and over-simplifies a complex problem with a blunt solution.
Today, on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we speak with Dr. Jean Twenge to get more clarity on the situation: Is there a mental health crisis amongst today’s teens? Is it unique to their generation? And can it really be traced to the use of smartphones and social media?
According to Dr. Twenge, the answer to all those questions is, pretty much, “Yes.” But, she said, there’s still some hope to be found.
“This is where the argument around smartphones and social media being behind the adolescent mental health crisis actually has, kind of paradoxically, some optimism to it. Because if that’s the cause, that means we can do something about it.”
They say the only backup you ever regret is the one you didn’t make. iPhone backups can be used to easily move your apps and data to a new phone, to recover things you’ve lost, or to fix things that have failed.
We’ve published posts on how to back up your iPhone to iCloud, and how to backup an iPhone to a Mac. Another method is to backup using the iTunes app on a Windows system.
Choose whichever backup method works best for you, and will continue to work.
They say the only backup you ever regret is the one you didn’t make. iPhone backups can be used to easily move your apps and data to a new phone, to recover things you’ve lost, or to fix things that have failed.
One of the most cost effective ways to backup your iPhone is to save backups to your Mac. Backups are made automatically whenever you connect your iPhone to your Mac with a lead. Be aware though that backups can take up a lot of space on your Mac, and that if your Mac is lost, stolen, or inoperable, then you won’t be able to access your iPhone backups. If you need daily backups or backups that can always be accessed from anywhere, you may prefer to backup your iPhone to iCloud.
This guide tells you how to enable backups to your Mac, and how to check that everything is working as you expect.
First, connect your iPhone or iPad to a Mac using a cable.
Open the Finder app and select your iPhone from the list of Locations.
Click General.
Under Backups, choose Back up all of the data on your iPhone to this Mac.
To encrypt your backup data and protect it with a password, select Encrypt local backup. You will be prompted for a password.
Click Back Up Now.
We don’t just report on phone security—we provide it
They say the only backup you ever regret is the one you didn’t make. iPhone backups can be used to easily move your apps and data to a new phone, to recover things you’ve lost, or to fix things that have failed.
The most convenient way to backup your iPhone is to have it backup to iCloud. Backups are made every day, automatically, provided your phone is connected to power and locked. Be aware though that backups take take up a lot of your iCloud storage, and your phones’ data plan if you choose to backup when you aren’t connected to Wi-Fi. If those are likely to be problems for you, you might prefer to backup your iPhone to your Mac.
This guide tells you how to enable backups to iCloud, and how to check that everything is working as you expect.
Open the Settings app.
Then tap where you see your name and Apple ID, iCloud+, Media & Purchases.
Next, tap iCloud.
Scroll down and tap iCloud Backup.
Toggle Back Up This iPhone to on.
This may reveal a Back Up Over Cellular Data or Back Up Over Mobile Data toggle. This creates backups when you aren’t connected to Wi-Fi. Because backups can use a lot of data, toggling this on may cause you to exceed your data plan.
Once you have made a backup, you can access it from this screen under ALL DEVICE BACKUPS.
You can return to the previous screen by tapping the < iCloud link at the top. This screen shows you how much storage space your backups are using. To see a little more detail, tap Manage Account Storage.
Scroll down the list of apps until you see Backups to see how much storage your backups are using.
We don’t just report on phone security—we provide it
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