Enlarge / OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. (credit: JASON REDMOND / Contributor | AFP)

Apple and OpenAI have successfully made a deal to include OpenAI's generative AI technology in Apple's software, according to The Information, which cites a source who has spoken to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman about the deal.

It was previously reported by Bloomberg that the deal was in the works. The news appeared in a longer article about Altman and his growing influence within the company.

"Now, [Altman] has fulfilled a longtime goal by striking a deal with Apple to use OpenAI’s conversational artificial intelligence in its products, which could be worth billions of dollars to the startup if it goes well," according to The Information's source.

Enlarge / ICQ in Windows 98. (credit: Samuel Axon)

After nearly 28 years in operation, messaging service ICQ will cease operations on June 26, according to its current owners.

You'd be forgiven for not realizing it still existed; the proto-IM service hasn't been in the mainstream since the 2000s. But in the late 1990s and early 2000s, it simultaneously laid the groundwork for direct messaging and social networking as we came to know it in the post-Facebook era.

28 years of history

ICQ was something of an accident, as popular as it became. Created by four Israeli computer geeks, it wasn't even meant to be the original idea.

Enlarge / iPadOS 17.5.1 ready to install on an iPad Pro. (credit: Samuel Axon)

On May 20, Apple released iOS 17.5.1 to fix a bug users had found a few days prior in iOS 17.5 that resurfaced old photos that had been previously deleted. So far, the update seems to have resolved the issue, but users were left wondering exactly what had happened. Now Apple has clarified the issue somewhat, describing the nature of the bug to 9to5Mac.

Apple told the publication that the photos were not regurgitated from iCloud Photos after being deleted on the local device; rather, they were local to the device. Apple says they were neither left in the cloud after deletion nor synced to it after, and the company did not have access to the deleted photos.

The photos were retained on the local device storage due to a database corruption issue, and the bug resurfaced photos that were flagged for deletion but were not actually fully deleted locally.

It has been a tumultuous run for Netflix's popular adaptation of The Witcher novels and games. A series of setbacks and controversies led to a long delay after the show lost its star, Henry Cavill. Now a brief season four teaser gives us our first look at Cavill's replacement in the role of Geralt of Rivia, Liam Hemsworth.

The video above reveals little about the direction for the season beyond establishing that, yes, Hemsworth is now Geralt, and here's what it looks like. He looks the part, though it's hard for some fans to imagine him matching Cavill's pitch-perfect presence and delivery for the character.

See, Cavill is famously a passionate gamer. He's talked at length about his deep fandom of Warhammer 40K, his experiences playing World of Warcraft, and yes, his experiences with 2015's immensely popular open-world RPG The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. He even has appeared in a video building a gaming PC.

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  The new headphones look just like earlier leaks showed. [credit: Sonos ]

After months of rumors and leaks, audio brand Sonos has announced and revealed its first foray into personal audio with the Sonos Ace, pricey wireless over-ear headphones that compete with the likes of Apple's AirPods Max and Sony's popular WH-1000XM5.

The Bluetooth 5.4 headphones were shown to select press outlets in New York this week. It's too early to judge their sound quality, but they're priced at the high end, and Sonos has a good reputation on that front.

Each cup has a 40 mm driver, and there are a total of eight microphones for noise control. Notably, the headphones weigh less than Apple's AirPods Max.

Enlarge / iPadOS 17.5.1 ready to install on an iPad Pro. (credit: Samuel Axon)

Apple has released its first bug fix update for iOS and iPadOS. The 17.5.1 release claims to fix a bug that saw some users' deleted photos resurface long after deletion.

The release notes list just one bullet point:

This update provides important bug fixes and addresses a rare issue where photos that experienced database corruption could reappear in the Photos library even if they were deleted.

Users started reporting the issue after iOS 17.5 and iPadOS 17.5 were released on May 13. The optics certainly weren't great for Apple, as some users assumed that the company was keeping their long-lost deleted photos (sometimes nude photos, as some reported seeing those pop up again) in the cloud without telling them.

Right on schedule for past releases, iFixit has done a teardown of Apple's new, redesigned iPad Pro. It found that the iPad itself has one big improvement in repairability over its predecessor but that the Apple Pencil Pro is basically unserviceable.

The first step in the teardown video revealed arguably Apple's most interesting new tech: the "Tandem OLED" screen. It doesn't reveal anything we didn't already know and describe in our review last week, but it's neat to see what it all looks like up close.

The teardown also found that there are not one but two metal brackets all the way through the middle of the iPad to help with durability. Some worried that the new, thinner iPad Pro would be thinner than past models to snap in half, but durability tests have shown that's not the case. This could be part of why.

Enlarge / The 2024, M4-equipped 13-inch iPad Pro. (credit: Samuel Axon)

The new iPad Pro is a technical marvel, with one of the best screens I’ve ever seen, performance that few other machines can touch, and a new, thinner design that no one expected.

It’s a prime example of Apple flexing its engineering and design muscles for all to see. Since it marks the company’s first foray into OLED beyond the iPhone or Watch, and the first time a new M-series chip has debuted on something other than a Mac, it comes across as a tech demo for where the company is headed beyond just tablets.

Still, it remains unclear why most people would spend one, two, or even three thousand dollars on a tablet that, despite its amazing hardware, does less than a comparably priced laptop—or at least does it a little more awkwardly, even if it's impressively quick and has a gorgeous screen.