A private social media account has claimed the soon-to-release operating system updates will be preinstalled on inbound hardware that could arrive soon, including the fourth-gen iPhone SE and iPad refreshes.


Apple entered the release candidate stage of its operating system updates on Tuesday, meaning the final releases to the public could happen soon. If a social media account is to be believed, new hardware may not be all that far behind.

A private X account with a good track record for accuracy as it pertains to operating system details claims that the 22D8062 build of iOS 18.3 will be preinstalled on the iPhone SE, the fourth-gen model that is anticipated to arrive soon. At the same time, it says build 22D2060 of iPadOS 18.3 will be preinstalled on the 11th gen iPad and iPad Air.


Rumor Score: 🤯 Likely


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Apple resellers continue to issue steep price drops on Apple devices, with the high-end M4 Max 16-inch MacBook Pro eligible for a $350 discount.


The 16-inch M4 Max model is marked down at Amazon, B&H, and Adorama (the latter with the use of coupon code APINSIDER) and comes equipped with a 14-core CPU and 32-core GPU. It also has 36GB of unified memory and 1TB of storage, all of which are upgrades from the standard M4 Pro spec.

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Apple's iPhone 16 lineup is shaking up buyer trends, with recent buyers favoring affordability and practicality over flashy upgrades.


In the last month or so, more buyers have been opting for value-focused options instead of splurging on premium models. Data from the 2024 holiday quarter shows that while new Pro models perform well, base and older iPhones are gaining popularity.

According to data from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) for the December 2024 quarter, the iPhone 16 models collectively held a 68% share of U.S. sales, slightly surpassing the 65% share of the iPhone 15 models in the previous year. However, a closer look reveals notable year-over-year shifts in model preferences.


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In a first of its kind promotion for Apple TV+, the cast of "Severance" appeared in character, working in a pop-up glass office at Grand Central Terminal.


"Severance" has been a critical and popular hit since it started, and is already talked about so much that it probably doesn't need promotion. But that's what it got with an all-star stunt at New York's Grand Central on January 14, 2025.

Apple has now released footage of the stunt, showing stars including Adam Scott, Britt Lower, and Zach Cherry, working in a replica of their "Severance" office set. Placed in a glass cube, the pop-up was big enough for four cubicles and some room to walk around the edges.


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Leveraging an attack vector that's been in play off and on for the last two decades, hackers are targeting Mac users with malware camouflaged as the popular Homebrew tool, and spreading it through deceptive Google ads.


Malicious actors are leveraging Google ads to distribute malware through a counterfeit Homebrew website. The campaign targets macOS and Linux users with an infostealer that compromises credentials, browser data, and cryptocurrency wallets.

Homebrew, a widely-used open-source package manager, enables users to manage software through a command line. Hackers recently exploited its popularity by creating a malicious Google ad.


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Apple Miami Worldcenter is opening on January 24, with the unique storefront designed for accessibility and the environment, complete with a plant-covered roof.


Apple Stores often offer designs that incorporate the retail outlet aesthetic into interesting buildings and structures, beyond the typical mall locations. With Apple Miami Worldcenter, Apple is taking a very outlandish approach.

Photographs shared days ahead of its January 24 opening reveal Apple Miami Worldcenter to be an unusual store design, even for Apple. For a start, while it is a store that is surrounded by skyscrapers, it's a ground-level retail space without stairs or any additional height.


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In a repeat of how it fumbled its costly and entirely failed COVID app, the UK is ignoring Apple Wallet and will instead develop its own digital wallet for documents such as driving licences.


The move to digital driving licences, passports, and so on seems so inevitable that Apple has been working on it for years. So it's no surprise that the UK is following the US's lead and implementing the same idea, yet it's not the surprise it should be that the country is going it alone.

In the official announcement, the UK government says that it is simplifying digital documents and in doing so to save the equivalent of $55 billion. The UK's economy has yet to recover from 14 years of a Conservative government that split the country from the EU, so saving money is clearly a priority.


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Apple's Mac mini with M4 can fit into a lot of use cases, especially because of its new, smaller size, and three months later, it's proven to be one of the most versatile Macs yet.


Redesigns can be fun and eye-catching, but they don't always lead to fundamental changes in what's possible or desired from a platform. The Mac mini with M4 is an exception, as it is now small enough to slot into some unique use cases.

It's not that the previous Mac mini was large by any stretch, and there are certainly smaller desktop-class PCs out there, so a Mac being this small shouldn't be a big deal. Except, portability in Macs is more important than ever thanks to one product in particular — Apple Vision Pro.


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The now almost four month-long ban on sales of the iPhone 16 in Indonesia may be lifted "very, very soon," according to a government minister.


Indonesia banned sales of the iPhone 16 in October 2024, just weeks after it was launched. It was because of the country's laws about locally-sourced components, and also because Apple had fallen short on its investment commitments.

According to Bloomberg, the long negotiation between Apple and the country may be about to be resolved. There are no specific details of any deal with Apple, and the company has not commented, but a local minister has said the conclusion is in sight.


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Apple's new Clean Up tool is a great use of Apple Intelligence that can enhance your photos without excessive editing. Here's how it works.


Clean Up is part of Apple Intelligence as, unlike with some repair tools, it uses generative AI. The AI analyzes the photo to do its best to fill in or remove the selected area.

We have found it to be one of the most useful Apple Intelligence features in our testing so far.


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Marvel Snap is once again available to users in the United States, following the aftermath of the TikTok ban and the actions against ByteDance, but it still isn't on Apple's App Store.


Marvel Snap is a relatively popular digital card-collecting game. The game's publisher is Nuverse, a subsidiary of none other than ByteDance — the same company that owns the controversial social media platform TikTok, CapCut, and other applications.

On January 19, 2025, the United States government enacted a blanket ban against all ByteDance applications, including both TikTok and Marvel Snap. As a result, the apps were no longer available to users in the United States, and they were both removed from the US App Store on iOS.


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President Trump signed an executive order demanding that many landmarks change their names, including the Gulf of Mexico, but Apple Maps hasn't changed. Here's why it isn't quite that simple.


Maps are a funny thing. For a long time, we studied global geography using a map designed in 1569, but it inaccurately shows North America and Europe as much larger than they should be.

Nearly five hundred years later, we've started adapting more recent models that accurately show continent size. I bring this up simply because maps are complicated and changing the ones we rely on can take a lot of time and effort.


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In a likely attempt to satisfy current shareholders and deal with increased content production and licensing costs, Netflix is increasing pricing for most of its plans, worldwide.


Users can expect to pay even more for their Netflix subscriptions in 2025, as Netflix has raised prices across the board. Virtually every Netflix plan, from the low-cost ad-supported subscription option to the premium plan, will see a substantial increase in pricing. The change applies to multiple countries, as well, directly impacting a large number of consumers.

The company's cheapest ad-supported plan will increase to $7.99 per month, up from the previous $6.99. The standard ad-free plan, meanwhile, will go from a monthly price of $15.49 to $17.99. The price of the premium tier will be a whole $2 higher — $24.99, instead of the usual $22.99.


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Amazon is ramping up its deals on Apple this week, with fresh price drops on AirPods, AirTags, MacBooks and more. We've rounded up the best offers to save you money in 2025.


A single AirTag is down to $22.99 at Amazon this Tuesday, along with a steep discount on an upgraded 14-inch MacBook Pro with 1TB of storage and the 14C CPU/20C GPU M4 Pro chip.

We're following the deals (and dozens more) in our Apple Price Guide, with top offers from the sale handpicked by our team and broken down by category below.


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The iPhone 16 range will receive support for two Visual Intelligence features with the iOS 18.3 update, while Apple Intelligence's notification summaries are getting much needed changes.


On Tuesday, Apple deployed release candidate versions of iOS 18.3 and iPadOS 18.3. Though the update is compatible with devices as old as the iPhone XR and iPhone XS, Tuesday's release candidate primarily affects the iPhone 16 line and its unique Visual Intelligence features.

More general Apple Intelligence changes and fixes are also present in the update. Primarily, Apple has changed how notification summaries work after several problems with how the feature dealt with news headlines.


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Marking a fairly short round of developer betas, Apple has issued the first release candidates of iOS 18.3, iPadOS 18.3, tvOS 18.3, visionOS 2.3, watchOS 11.3, and macOS 15.3, alongside other builds.


On Tuesday, Apple issued what has become the first release candidates for the current developer beta generation. The first RC editions of iOS 18.3, iPadOS 18.3, macOS 15.3, tvOS 18.3, visionOS 2.3, and watchOS 11.3 were all offered for testing.

There were also RC releases for older operating systems too. iPadOS 17.7.4 was made available in RC, as well as macOS 14.7.3. Apple often introduces builds for older operating systems, which often consists of compatibility updates and security patches.


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A sketchy report claims to have calculated the precise income Apple TV+ has made from key shows like "Severance," but the figure appear to be guesses that ignore how the company's business model is different to all other streamers.


"Severance" is unquestionably a much-talked about hit for Apple TV+, but aside from a Blu-ray release, the only income it can provide Apple is from the number of subscribers it attracts to the streamer. Apple has yet to release any subscriber numbers at all, but according to Deadline, one company is saying it has calculated the financial value of Apple TV+ shows.

Research firm Parrot Analytics has not made its full report public, and shares no details of what it calls its Content Valuation methodology. Unlike any other streamer, though, the only revenue stream for Apple TV+ is subscription.


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Despite President Trump's temporary stay on the federal TikTok ban, it's extremely unlikely that the video-sharing app will return to the App Store anytime soon. Here's why.


On January 19, the U.S. government enacted a blanket ban against ByteDance apps, owners of popular apps such as TikTok, Marvel Snap, and CapCut. A day later, President Trump signed an executive order delaying the ban for 75 days.

And yet, despite that, TikTok — or any app developed by ByteDance Ltd — has yet to reappear on the App Store or the Google Play store. And, according to a new Apple support page, it appears as if it's going to stay that way.


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A new image leak supposedly backs up a claim of a major camera bar redesign for the iPhone 17 or iPhone 17 Slim, but the rumor still seems too improbable to be true.


In December, a series of rumors proposed that Apple would radically shake up the camera on the iPhone 17. While seemingly unlikely, those rumors have resurfaced a month later, thanks to a blurry photograph.

Shared by serial leaker Majin Bu on X on Tuesday, the post offers a single shot of two smartphone-like devices. Seemingly under a plastic sheet, the two devices bear Apple logos in the middle, similar to Apple's other hardware products.


Rumor Score: 🙄 Unlikely


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A new report from the supply chain claims that Apple is developing one new iPad Pro for release in 2025, but that it will be just a spec bump update.


It's previously been rumored that an updated iPad Pro with an M5 processor will be released in late 2025, though all such reports have presumed the update will be for both the 11-inch and 13-inch models. Now a new report from The Elec describes just one model being updated, but it is still unlikely that it won't apply to both.

The report in The Elec is focused on a specific OLED component company — LX Semicon — which is said to be hoping to gain approval from Apple for mass production for one device. The company makes Display Driver ICs (DDIs), which is a processor that controls the screen.


Rumor Score: 🤔 Possible


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Apple's iPhone sales in China reportedly took a tumble at the end of 2024, with a considerable reduction in sales putting it in a dead heat with homegrown Xiaomi.


The iPhone 16 has struggled in China since launch, but there was hope holiday shopping would improve its standing in the important territory. It seems that hope was misplaced.

According to analysis by Counterpoint, Apple's position in China got weaker in the fourth quarter of 2024. In a year-on-year market share comparison, Apple saw its sales fall 18.2% compared to Q4 2023.


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Trump's day-one tariffs on China haven't been implemented yet, but he's still maintaining the fiction that it isn't American consumers who will pay the price.


There is no gray area here: tariffs are not a tax on other countries, they result solely in higher prices for Americans. Nonetheless, as he did during his first term, President Trump is again imposing tariffs, just not yet on China.

During the campaign, he committed to introduce tariffs on his first day in office, and specifically that he would levy a 60% tariff on imports from China, plus a further 10% duty on Chinese goods. None of that happened, and instead newly announced tariffs will instead start from February 1, 2025, for Mexico and Canada.


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There's a new year upon us, with 2025 capping off a quarter-century of the modern Apple and its definitive role in personal computing innovation. In particular, 2025 marks 25 years of Apple's intuitive experience that turns elements of hardware and software into a magical coherence.


These last twenty five years have represented the most critically important turn-around in the history of personal technology. In that quarter-century the formerly underdog "Apple Computer Inc" completely shed its beleaguered, clumsy, struggling image as the faded remains of the 1980's Macintosh company, hopelessly trying to remain relevant in a Microsoft Windows world.

The tech media widely regarded Apple as simply flailing, indecisively pursuing ineffectual software and impractical hardware strategies to desperately patch together a reason for existing in what appeared to be a new age that had simply passed Apple up and left it to decay into the past. Just like Atari, Polaroid, Sega, or Kmart.


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Alongside its famously gorgeous landscape and cityscape screensavers, Apple TV 4K set top boxes now feature animated Snoopy screensavers. Here's how to get them onto your Mac.


Since Apple TV acquired the rights to screen classic "Charlie Brown" shows, and make new ones, it also added the cartoon's Snoopy to the Apple Watch. Then from tvOS 18.2, Apple TV 4K has gained four animated Snoopy screensavers.

Getting them from Apple TV to your Mac turns out to take many steps, but they're each quite simple. And the reward for your efforts is to see:


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