Founded in 1976 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne, Apple is best known for making some of the world’s most ubiquitous consumer devices, software, and services: the iPhone, iPad, iMac and MacBook computers, Apple TV, Apple Watch, iOS, iCloud, iTunes, Apple Music, Apple Pay, and many more. Led by CEO Tim Cook since 2011, Apple is one of the largest technology companies in the world alongside Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Facebook.
Apple’s long-rumored virtual and augmented reality headset Vision Pro headset launches in February. Here’s a timeline of all the details that have emerged about the device over the years and what we know so far.
Apple’s new platform is going to have some new — and maybe weird — apps.
Under the Digital Services Act, Apple must display the contact information for developers considered “traders” on the App Store. On Tuesday, Apple said it had removed “apps without trader status” in the EU, adding that it will reinstate them once developers provide the required information, as reported earlier by TechCrunch.
In Apple TV Plus’ new adaptation of Dennis Tafoya’s 2009 novel Dope Thief, best friends Ray and Manny (Brian Tyree Henry and Wagner Moura) come up with the bright idea to pose as Drug Enforcement Administration agents in order to rob other criminals more easily. Very little about the duo’s plan seems to be paying off in a new trailer for the series that highlights how quickly things start to go sideways. But the show looks like it might scratch that Breaking Bad itch for Apple TV Plus subscribers when it debuts on March 14th.
The next season of Major League Soccer kicks off this weekend, which means that so does another marketing push from Apple, which is the league’s streaming home. New for 2025: Apple TV Plus sleeve patches which have been customized for each of the 30 MLS clubs.
Machine learning scientist Jochem Gietema found that the Image Playground app struggled to consistently identify his skin tone and hair texture, and exhibited racial biases when following prompt directions. This isn’t uncommon for AI image generation models, but it’s a blunder that Apple missed despite limiting Image Playground to only faces in illustrated styles, in part to avoid such behavior.
9to5Mac spotted a Hackintosh Reddit community post in which user OceanDepth95028 showed off what they say is a near-total replacement of the 2013 Windows phone with the guts of a 3rd-gen iPhone SE.
They even preserved the iPhone’s Touch ID button (now on the back) and Lightning port (subbed for the Lumai’s Micro USB).
Apple told employees in a recent meeting that it’s considering the change, according to Mark Gurman in today’s issue of Power On for Bloomberg. The ads would be similar to those in Google Maps, with businesses paying to show up higher in search results or stand out on the map itself.
The change wouldn’t necessarily be soon, as Gurman writes that there is “no timeline or active engineering being done.”
[bloomberg.com]
Apple is still working on some big AI-powered upgrades to Siri, but instead of launching with iOS 18.4, they may be limited or delayed until iOS 18.5, Bloomberg reports.
Apple Intelligence is to be powered primarily by Alibaba, with a few features — including Visual Intelligence — handled by Baidu, according to Bloomberg. Apple’s own software will handle on-device processing, with Alibaba and Baidu stepping in for server-side tasks, including censorship.
Apple is reportedly targeting a mid-year launch, but has regulatory hurdles to clear first.
A new interface update adds search and quick navigation buttons to the main screen on the right side, so you don’t have to tap to make the top bar appear to start your next trip, 9to5Google and autoevolution report. The new shortcut button lets you tap to quickly begin navigating to home or work based on the time of day.
If you were hoping its rumored home robotics foray might bring us a Rosey the Robot, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has bad news. In a post on X, he said sources indicate Apple is focused on developing a bot we’ll bond with over creating a humanoid assistant, as “...supply chain checks indicate Apple cares more about how users build perception with robots than their physical appearance.”
The good news is that means we might get that adorable lamp-droid Apple after all.
The Google AI assistant’s Deep Research mode now works on both Android and iPhone, though is still exclusive to paying Gemini Advanced subscribers. The mode, which can produce relatively detailed research reports, launched as a web-only option in December. It expanded to Android last week and iOS yesterday.
ChatGPT has its own deep research feature, which we tested last week to mixed results.
[9to5google.com]
0Pixelmator, Pixelmator Pro, and Photomator are now officially part of Apple. As noticed by MacRumors, all of Pixelmator’s apps are showing a pop-up message confirming that the deal announced back in November has been finalized.
At least for now, the key question of what Apple will do with Pixelmator’s software remains unanswered. Will it carry on as a standalone offering and be the second coming of Aperture? Or are we going to see a Photos Plus subscription debut at WWDC in a matter of months?
While Apple Intelligence has reached the EU -- and, according to some, devices where it had already been declined -- the company hasn’t launched its AI features in China yet. A report by The Information on Tuesday indicates it could be getting closer, saying that after evaluating models from Tencent, ByteDance, Alibaba, and DeepSeek, Apple has submitted some features co-developed with Alibaba for approval by Chinese regulators.
[theinformation.com]
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