Don't limit yourself to one ecosystem of smart home devices by using Aqara products, which are compatible with the Matter protocol.


Chances are, if you have smart home devices, they belong to one ecosystem — Apple Home, Amazon, or Google Home. However, there are likely products in ecosystems outside of your own that you'd love to have in your home.

That's where Matter comes in. It is an interoperability standard that lets devices built for Google Home also work in Apple Home, Amazon, or other ecosystems.


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The M4 Mac mini came with a surprise — a slotted and upgradeable SSD. Here's how to install one, get it running, and what to expect for speed.


Mac mini upgradeability has varied over the years. The 2012 and before models were the gold standard, with both upgradeable RAM and storage. The 2014 model had upgradeable storage, but not RAM. The 2018 had RAM slots, but lacked upgradeable storage.

When the M1 mini shipped, nothing was upgradeable. And while Apple doesn't strictly approve of SSD upgrades on the M4 Mac mini, it's at least possible.


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As WWDC inches closer hints of Jony Ive's AI device leak, Google announcements challenge Apple Intelligence, and "Fortnite" is back on the iPhone, all on the AppleInsider Podcast.


Assuming you can tear yourself away from Fortnite, the biggest news this week has to be about Jony Ive and Sam Altman. Together they have revealed exactly what their proposed AI device will be — but unfortunately, they've only revealed it to their new OpenAI owners.

The rest of us will have to make do with hints. They are enough to make one AppleInsider podcast host excited — and the other completely dismissive.


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President Trump continues to emphasize that Apple must make the iPhone in the United States, or a steep import tariff will continue to be applied to the company.


Tim Cook previously managed to secure significant tariff exemptions from Trump, even if they were officially only temporary. Now, following Trump's telling Cook to build iPhones in the US instead of India, Apple is being threatened with what appears to be a brand new tariff.

Now Trump has announced on his Truth Social platform that there will be a penalty if Apple does not move manufacturing to the States.


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Pages on the Mac has a reputation for being too basic because Apple gives it away for free, but it hides exceptionally powerful word processing features.


This is an exaggeration, but broadly Microsoft Word wants you to be impressed with all of its features — while Apple Pages wants you to get on with your writing and layout. So Pages gets out of your way, and as good as that is, it has an unexpected side effect.

Since you can't see a ribbon toolbar with dozens of options, and since the menus are not over flowing with choices, you can think Pages lacks features. It is still the case that Microsoft Word has more, but Pages is replete with features that are just a click away.


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In an attempt to help stem falling iPhone sales in China, Apple has introduced new trade-in deals, though they seem too minor.


Apple has long benefited from trade-in deals, where it gets to sell new iPhones and also make money from old ones. In more recent years, it's also seen sales in China decline, and enough so that local resellers have been offering steep discounts.

Some of those discounts were already tied to Trade-in deals, but now according to CNBC, Apple is increasing the value of its regular trade-in offers. The deals are said to cover a range of iPhone models, but only those for the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max have been reported.


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The Keychain K15 Max is a good low-profile Alice-layout keyboard for Mac users, albeit with no real color options.


It's 2025 and you can't throw a mechanical switch without hitting a new keyboard manufacturer, and the options are nearly unlimited. Ranging from large to small, lightweight to heavy, and boasting a staggering array of bells and whistles, consumers are spoiled for choice.

Companies compete for the attention and dollars of consumers by producing excellent keyboards. While many have become recognized brands around the world, Keychron continues to stand out as a company determined to overwhelm consumers with options.


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Plans for an Apple Watch with Visual Intelligence and built-in cameras have been abandoned, but Apple's AirPods could still receive a similar upgrade.


The idea of a camera-equipped Apple Watch is anything but new, appearing in Apple's patent applications as far back as 2019. The company has even considered multiple ways of including a camera, such as incorporating it into the Digital Crown or the Apple Watch strap.

More recently, in March 2025, a rumor suggested that the Apple Watch would gain cameras for Visual Intelligence features as well as world monitoring by 2027. On Thursday, however, a Bloomberg report revealed that Apple has since given up on the idea, and added that the company was working on smart glasses, set to debut in 2026.


Rumor Score: 🤔 Possible


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The long-rumored Apple Glass smart glasses will reportedly hit store shelves by the end of 2026, with Apple planning for them to be part of its overall AI push.


Apple's smart glasses initiative has been repeatedly rumored, with the potential of a simplified form of Apple Glass arriving in late 2026 or early 2027. Now, it seems that Apple is really trying to get the head-mounted devices out in late 2026, and with more of an AI twist.

According to an employee of Apple speaking to Bloomberg on Thursday, Apple is planning to lean towards a release in late 2026, instead of allowing it to slip into 2027.


Rumor Score: 🤔 Possible


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The triple-digit markdown on Amazon delivers the lowest Apple Watch Series 10 price we've seen.


Amazon's $299 Apple Watch promo is available in your choice of a Rose Gold Aluminum Case with a Light Blush Sport Band or a Jet Black Aluminum Case with a Black Sport Band. Both styles have the 42mm case with GPS functionality.

Buy for $299


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According to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, OpenAI and Jony Ive are planning a neck-worn AI device with a similar form factor to the iPod Shuffle.


TF International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo revealed on X that the new AI device from Jony Ive and OpenAI is expected to enter mass production in 2027. In his post, he said the prototype is slightly larger than Humane's (failed) AI Pin but remains as compact and elegant as an iPod Shuffle.

The device won't include a display and is designed to be worn around the neck, using cameras and microphones for environmental awareness. It will connect to smartphones and PCs for computing power and display output, positioning it squarely in the emerging category of ambient, screenless AI.


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One Georgia hospital is trading PCs for Apple gear — and transforming patient care in the process.


Healthcare has long been dominated by PCs, largely because most clinical software has been developed for — or better supported on —Windows. However, that is beginning to shift as Apple gains traction in medical settings.

Hospitals, clinics, and doctors offices are are beginning to see the utility of Apple products. They're intuitive to use, highly portable, and great for collaboration — and it doesn't hurt that many patients are comfortable with an iPad, either.


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Folding devices with two screens have potential beyond just more display real estate. Apple is researching, at length, how to make the interfaces of folding iPhone, iPad, or all-screen MacBook Pro more than the sum of its parts.


It's not as if it's a surprise that Apple has been researching an iPhone Fold, or a folding iPad. And of course it has had foldable laptops from the PowerBook 100 to today's MacBook Pro.

Yet the company is once more researching options that could even replace every one of those devices. After being granted a patent in 2024 for "User Interfaces For Devices With Multiple Displays," Apple has now re-submitted the same technology as a new patent application.


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A breach exposing 184 million passwords includes Apple login credentials used across iPhone and Mac computers.


On May 22, 2025, cybersecurity researcher Jeremiah Fowler reported the discovery of a massive unprotected database containing more than 184 million usernames and passwords. The 47-gigabyte Elasticsearch server was publicly accessible and not secured by a password or encryption.

The exposed credentials covered accounts from at least 29 countries and included login details for widely used platforms such as Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Apple. Fowler's original disclosure on Website Planet didn't list Apple services by name — but iCloud logins are present, following inspection.


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We all have old or low-quality videos that hold meaningful moments or valuable content. With VideoProc's AI video enhancer, you can instantly upgrade the visual quality and upscale to 4K on your Mac.


Chances are, you've got a collection of videos and photos captured long before digital cameras could record in 4K HDR. Maybe you've spent years digitizing old VHS tapes and DVDs to add them to your Apple Photos library, only to find them riddled with tiny resolution and static distortions.

Watching them on a modern 5K display without stretching feels like viewing memories through a postage stamp.


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As OpenAI buys Jony Ive and Sam Altman's AI startup, the two have shared with staff a few hints about what their highly secret device will do.


After weeks of speculation, OpenAI has bought Jony Ive and Sam Altman's AI startup for $6.5 billion. Publicly, OpenAI has posted a video discussing Ive and Altman's partnership in general, but now further details of their work has been revealed.

According to the Washington Post, Altman told OpenAI staff in a meeting on Wednesday, May 21, 2025, that the aim is to ship 100 million AI "companions." He described it as "the chance to do the biggest thing we've ever done as a company here."


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Your Photos library might sync with iCloud, but in macOS Sequoia, making a manual backup is still a smart way to guard against deletion or corruption. Here's how to keep your memories safe.


Apple's cloud service mirrors your library across devices, but if something gets deleted or corrupted, it vanishes everywhere. That's why a manual, local backup of your Photos library is critical.

Photos replaced iPhoto in 2015 but the local library structure remains largely the same. In macOS Sequoia, backing it up involves ensuring originals are downloaded, then copying the full library to an external or secondary location.


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The Innocn 49-inch OLED ultrawide monitor is an eye-catching monitor, and I'm a big fan. But some concerns may mean that Mac owners should choose something else.


I know that might not make a lot of sense, especially when I explain all of the things I like about this monitor. It's surprisingly affordable with some impressive specs, and it's changed the way I work.

It's also been a revelation when gaming, albeit with some limitations that aren't the monitor's fault. There's something to be said for playing an immersive game on a monitor that fills your vision.


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Apple has added the iPhone 7 Plus and two iPhone 8 models to its list of vintage and obsolete products, as it's been more than five years since both devices launched.


The iPhone 7 Plus, which launched in 2016, was the first iPhone to feature a dual rear camera system. Along with its smaller iPhone 7 counterpart, the iPhone 7 Plus introduced a solid-state home button and a jet black color option, but that was eight years ago.

Apple considers one of its products "vintage" when it stopped distributing them for sale more than five years ago, and less than seven years ago. Once a product hasn't been sold new for more than seven years, it's then classified as "obsolete." The company provides service and parts for vintage products for up to seven years, assuming the necessary parts are available.


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An Apple research paper suggests that humanoid robots can be more effectively trained with human instructors as well as robot demonstrators, which is part of a new combined approach the company calls "PH2D."


On Wednesday, a week after the company revealed its Matrix3D and StreamBridge AI models, Apple published new research on robots and how to train them. The iPhone maker's previous robotics efforts included the creation of a robotic lamp, among other things, but Apple's latest study deals with humanoid robots specifically.

The research paper, titled "Humanoid Policy ~ Human Policy," details the inadequacies of traditional robot-training methods and proposes a new solution that's both scalable and cost-effective.


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Memorial Day price drops are knocking up to $500 off Apple's M4 and M4 Pro Mac mini range, delivering prices from $529.


Both Amazon and B&H are discounting the current Mac mini product line by up to $500, reflecting the lowest prices on numerous upgraded configurations. Prices start at just $529 for the M4 range, with the steepest discounts available on the M4 Pro models.

Latest M4 Mac mini discounts


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OpenAI just made its biggest move yet — buying Jony Ive's AI startup — with hopes of building something that feels as magical as the first iPhone.


Initially, it was reported that OpenAI would buy Jony Ive's AI startup, simply named "io", for $500 million. To say that the actual sale cost was a bit higher would be an understatement.

The final sale price wound up being nearly $6.5 billion — in stock.


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Apple's actions to fight the injunction from its Epic Games App Store legal fight interfered with plans to launch the Xbox mobile web store, Microsoft has said.


The continuing legal drama between Apple and Epic Games over an anti-steering injunction harmed more than the two companies, it is alleged. According to an amicus brief supplied to the United States District Court for the Northern District of California on May 20, Microsoft's plans were impacted by Apple's unwillingness to play ball.

The brief, first reported by The Verge, focuses on the injunction, which required Apple to allow developers to link out to external websites to handle payments. The injunction was intended to permit external transactions, but Apple's implementation was far from what was intended by the court.


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Apple Pay is now the fifth most widely available online payment option as more shoppers ditch traditional checkout forms for faster, mobile-first alternatives.


A May 2025 study by Merchant Machine found Apple Pay is available on 5.25% of websites globally. That puts it just behind American Express and ahead of Shopify Pay, Google Pay, and Stripe.

PayPal remains the clear leader, appearing on more than a quarter of websites at 26.24%.


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Apple iPhone owners are still sticking with the brand at rates that shame every other smartphone producer, and a small dip in loyalty doesn't mean much without better data.


Apple iPhone owners aren't quite as loyal as they used to be. New data shows that 89% bought another iPhone when upgrading. That figure, known as the loyalty rate, measures how often customers stick with the same brand.

Though 89% still stick with the company when upgrading, that's down from a 94% high in 2021, according to new data from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP).


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The WWDC 2025 visionOS 3 debut will be the first look at what an annual update cycle looks like for Apple Vision Pro software. Here are some of our hopes for the platform.


There is a call for a lighter, cheaper Apple Vision Pro, but Apple can't provide that through a software update. There are plenty of quality-of-life updates that could help boost the platform.

When Apple Vision Pro launched in February 2024, it ran visionOS 1.0 with Apple's view of what the platform should be. After a few months of being used by more than just Apple engineers, the company was able to tackle a lot of issues not identified in beta testing.


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If you're not quite ready to pony up the $70 a month it takes to access Adobe's Creative Cloud Pro plan, there are plenty of low-cost and no-cost alternatives out there. Here are our favorites, updated on May 21, 2025.


Adobe products are industry standard, and, for many people, nothing else will do. I get it.

While I know that there are a plethora of alternatives to Photoshop available, I've also been using Photoshop since I was fourteen, which means I've got two more decades of experience with it. Photoshop is muscle memory for me, and that convenience is worth quite a bit.


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Recent regular media reporting about the newly publicized AirPlay "Airborne" vulnerability made it sound like your smart home and iPhones are wide open for attackers to rob you blind. They aren't.


Let's recap, because there's been a lot of hysteria lately.

AirPlay and CarPlay make it easy to stream media, mirror your screen, or connect your iPhone to your car. In April 2025, security researchers at Oligo discovered vulnerabilities in how some third-party devices implement AirPlay.


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One user tracking his stolen iPhone has led to the uncovering of a global theft system where it hardly matters that your device is locked.


Increasingly sophisticated thieves have previously been reported using tracking data to steal iPhones before they are delivered. Whether it's that or snatching iPhones out of people's hands, though, it appears that at least many stolen devices are then shipped internationally.

According to the Financial Times, they end up in the Huaqiangbei district of Shenzhen, China. It's an ironic place for them to go, since Shenzhen is around 30 minutes drive from where Foxconn originally manufactures so many of them.


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The Notes app in iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 makes it easy to add an audio recording to a note, and create a written transcription of it if desired. Here's how to do it.


It has long been possible to add an audio recording to a note created in the Notes app, but in earlier iOS versions it was a little more cumbersome. Users would open the Voice Memos app, record the audio, and then attach that recording to a new note in the Notes app.

As of iOS 18, that functionality is directly available in Notes — though it is still somewhat hidden until you know how to find it. The big change compared to the previous Voice Memos app is that Notes can now also provide a written transcript of what was said, if you are using an iPhone 12 or later.


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Apple was in danger of having to show up in court on May 27 if it didn't respond satisfactorily to a show cause order by Wednesday, but neither is no longer necessary.


After two Fortnite App Store submissions were seemingly ghosted by Apple, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez ordered Apple to show cause by May 21. After that, Apple wasted little time in getting the game approved and back on the US App Store.

A joint filing shared with AppleInsider by Epic shows the two companies had resolved all issues related to the show cause order. The filing means Apple will no longer need to submit anything, nor will it have to appear in court on May 27.


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Over four years after Epic broke App Store rules and sparked a billion-dollar battle, "Fortnite" is finally back on iPhone and iPad.


For those who have missed playing Fortnite on iPhone and iPad, today's your lucky day: it's back on the App Store. After successfully passing its review in early May, the game has been cleared by Apple and made available to players once more.

It's been four years since Fortnite was last available on iOS. In the summer of 2020, Epic willingly violated Apple's App Store rules by allowing players the option to purchase Fortnite's in-game currency directly from Epic.


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Apple has released a new firmware update for the USB-C variant of the AirPods Max, although no information is available about the update's contents.


Tuesday's firmware update increases the build number to 7E108, up from the previous 7E101. Unlike most firmware updates, this software release is only compatible with the more recent version of the AirPods Max, equipped with a USB-C port.

Though the exact contents of the 7E108 firmware update are unclear, the software likely includes various bug fixes and quality-of-life improvements, possibly for new AirPods Max features introduced with the earlier 7E101 update.


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The Gemini app for iOS is being updated with extra AI smarts, including a better-performing Gemini 2.5 Flash and a new Gemini Live camera.


Google I/O is the search giant's annual gathering to show off the company's latest innovations. As usual, a lot of it is about artificial intelligence, and some of it applies to iOS.

The Gemini app for iOS is the beneficiary of some of the announcements, with updates to the app rolling out to users from Tuesday onwards.


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Third-party developers will allegedly be able to incorporate Apple Intelligence models into their apps in iOS 19, in an initiative that could significantly boost adoption of Apple's AI efforts.


Apple's existing AI-based offerings are under the banner of Apple Intelligence. While the rollout of features under the masthead has been slow, it may become even more useful in the near future.

According to a report on Tuesday from Bloomberg, Apple is working on ways to let external developers take advantage of its AI models. Third-party apps will be able to incorporate features that lean on models Apple has developed and implemented into its Apple Intelligence features.


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A slew of new Elgato Stream Decks have been announced, aimed at everyone from the usual individuals, through network users and DIY fans, and even on to other manufacturers.


Elgato's Stream Deck may have begun as an accessory for gamers and streamers, but it's become a whole series of devices for Mac productivity. Now Elgato has announced four new variants designed to expand the Stream Deck's use and widen its appeal.

The four new additions to the Stream Deck range are:


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Adobe's new "Creative Cloud Pro" plan now comes with a new name, a bigger bill, and not much else. Here's how the price tiers compare in May 2025.


Adobe has just announced that it will jump prices on its Creative Cloud All Apps plan — and gave it a bit of a rebrand in the process. At a time when everything is becoming more expensive, the move seems, at best, poorly timed.

Starting June 17, Adobe will jack up prices for access to its Creative Cloud subscription, and prices will go into effect upon a user's next renewal date. Here's what you can expect.


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Three weeks before the keynote, Apple has started to lay out what developers can expect from WWDC 2025, including the scheduling of key presentations and other sessions.


The initial announcement of WWDC in March gave a heads-up to developers to prepare for the June 9 to June 13 event. On Tuesday, Apple offered more of an insight of what to expect from the week-long developer-centric conference.

The main event in terms of updates will be the keynote, which will be held on the first day, June 9, at 10 a.m. Pacific, 1 p.m. Eastern. The keynote, which will be streamed on Apple.com, the Apple TV app, and YouTube, will play host to Apple's key changes to its operating systems, including iOS 19 and macOS 16.


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Not only can the Bluetti Apex 300 keep your lights on and appliances running during an outage as a portable power station, it can also work as a 0ms UPS for your Apple gear.


Bluetti offers a range of portable power stations and home backup solutions, but the latest Apex 300 Solar Generator is a first-of-its-kind model. It combines portability with serious power and grid-tied integration.

Get an early bird discount


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A Thunderbolt 4 or Thunderbolt 5 dock is the absolute best way to charge and add ports and to your MacBook Pro with one cable. Here are AppleInsider's recommendations for the best Thunderbolt docks, updated on May 20, 2025.


One of the problems when buying a MacBook is that you'll feel like there aren't enough ports for all of your hardware. The answer to that is to acquire a dock, which immediately adds a variety of ports to your computing setup.

However, not all docks are created equal. We know, because we've tested about all of them.


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