A tech enthusiast has successfully transplanted the internal components of an iPhone SE 3 into the body of a Nokia Lumia 1020 Windows Phone, according to a post on Reddit's r/hackintosh forum. The modification preserves all key functions of the iPhone SE 3, including its 12-megapixel camera, 5G capabilities, and Touch ID sensor, which has been relocated to the back of the device. The project retains the Lumia 1020's distinctive design while upgrading its outdated microUSB port to Apple's Lightning connector.

The creator adapted the Lumia's original camera shutter button to work as a secondary volume control that can trigger photos in the iPhone's camera app. The only significant feature lost in the conversion was the headphone jack.

Apple is exploring ways to monetize its Maps app by introducing paid business listings and prioritized search results, Bloomberg News reports, citing an internal company meeting with the Maps team. The initiative would allow businesses to pay for higher placement in search results and more prominent display on maps, similar to Google Maps' advertising model. While no timeline has been set and no active development is underway, the move would mark Apple's first attempt to generate direct revenue from its mapping service. The potential Maps monetization comes as Apple expands its advertising business across other services. The company has previously increased its focus on search ads in the App Store and recently added advertising to its News and Stocks apps, as well as its sports content.

Bloomberg reports that Apple's long-promised overhaul for Siri "is facing engineering problems and software bugs, threatening to postpone or limit its release, according to people with knowledge of the matter...." Last June, Apple touted three major enhancements coming to Siri:

- the ability to tap into a customer's data to better answer queries and take actions.
- a new system that would let the assistant more precisely control apps.
- the capability to see what's currently on a device's screen and use that context to better serve users....

The goal is to ultimately offer a more versatile Siri that can seamlessly tap into customers' information and communication. For instance, users will be able to ask for a file or song that they discussed with a friend over text. Siri would then automatically retrieve that item. Apple also has demonstrated the ability for Siri to quickly locate someone's driver's license number by reviewing their photos... Inside Apple, many employees testing the new Siri have found that these features don't yet work consistently...

The control enhancements — an upgraded version of something called App Intents — are central to the operation of the company's upcoming smart home hub. That product, an AI device for controlling smart home appliances and FaceTime, is slated for release later this year.
And Amazon is also struggling with an AI upgrade for its digital assistant, reports the Washington Post: The "smarter and more conversational" version of Alexa will not be available until March 31 or later, the employee said, at least a year and a half after it was initially announced in response to competition from OpenAI's ChatGPT. Internal messages seen by The Post confirmed the launch was originally scheduled for this month but was subsequently moved to the end of March... According to internal documents seen by The Post, new features of the subscriber-only, AI-powered Alexa could include the ability to adopt a personality, recall conversations, order takeout or call a taxi. Some of the new Alexa features are similar to Alexa abilities that were previously available free through partnerships with companies like Grubhub and Uber...

The AI-enhanced version of Alexa in development has been repeatedly delayed due to problems with incorrect answers, the employee working on the launch told The Post. As a popular product that is a decade old, the Alexa brand is valuable, and the company is hesitant to risk customer trust by launching a product that is not reliable, the person said.

Can the iPhone, AirPods, or the Apple Watch play a role in improving health? Apple says they want to find out.

"In medical research, discoveries are often limited by the number of participants who can be recruited, the amount of data that can be captured, and the duration of a given study," the company said in a blog post this week. "But Apple devices expand the possibilities..." This new longitudinal, virtual study aims to understand how data from technology — including Apple and third-party devices — can be used to predict, detect, monitor, and manage changes in participants' health. Additionally, researchers will explore connections across different areas of health.
CNBC reports: The new study will likely influence future product development. Apple CEO Tim Cook previously said he believes health features will be the company's "most important contribution to mankind...."

The Apple Health Study will be available through the company's Research app, and participation is voluntary. Users will select each data type they are willing to share with researchers, and they can stop sharing or completely discontinue their participation at any time. Apple has no access to participants' identifiable information, the company said... The project will last at least five years and may expand beyond that.
A Harvard Medical School professor and cardiologist — also a principal investigator on the Apple Health Study — says "We've only just begun to scratch the surface of how technology can improve our understanding of human health."

Netflix content briefly appeared in the Apple TV app due to an unintentional glitch, sparking excitement among users before the company swiftly rolled back the integration. Engadget reports: A Netflix spokesperson told The Verge on Friday that the Apple TV app integration was an error that has been rolled back. Indeed, Redditors who had been tracking the forbidden fruit with unbridled glee confirmed that all signs of Netflix content had since vanished from Apple's streaming hub. Netflix giveth, and Netflix taketh away.

While the boo-boo was still active, PC World reported it let you add Netflix originals like Stranger Things, Cobra Kai and The Crown but lacked licensed shows and movies. Even the available content was a buggy mess. For example, only season five of The Crown was available, leaving you to wonder what hijinks Liz and the gang had gotten into before or after the grunge era. The "Add to Watchlist" and "Continue Watching" features were also said to be spotty.

Alibaba will partner with Apple to support AI features on iPhones in China, sending Alibaba's shares surging over 9% to a three-year high. Reuters reports: "They talked to a number of companies in China. In the end they chose to do business with us. They want to use our AI to power their phones. We feel extremely honored to do business with a great company like Apple," Tsai said at the World Government Summit in Dubai. Apple continues to work with Baidu on AI features for iPhones in China, The Information reported on Thursday, citing two people with direct knowledge of the matter.

While Apple's phones outside China utilize a combination of its proprietary Apple Intelligence and OpenAI's ChatGPT, Tsai did not specify whether the Alibaba partnership would follow a similar model. In China, consumer-facing AI products require regulatory approval, and The Information reported earlier that both Alibaba and Apple have already submitted materials to authorities. "Instead of viewing the Alibaba-Apple partnership through the lens of China's AI strength, the partnership is mainly a recognition of Alibaba's AI capability," said Lian Jye Su, a chief analyst at tech research firm Omdia.

According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple will restore TikTok to the U.S. App Store on Thursday (source paywalled; alternative source), following a letter from U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi. From the report: Apple, along with Alphabet's Google, removed TikTok in the US to comply with a law passed last year. In a Jan. 20 executive order, Trump said he instructed the attorney general "not to take any action to enforce the act for a period of 75 days from today to allow my administration an opportunity to determine the appropriate course forward." Apple confirmed the app will return "Thursday evening." You can find the App Store listing for TikTok here.

Developing...

Apple CEO Tim Took took to X today to tease a special Apple product launch happening next week on Wednesday, February 19. 9to5Mac reports: Few specific details were shared, but Cook did include a brief video featuring the Apple logo in silver plus the following words: "Get ready to meet the newest member of the family. Wednesday, February 19. #AppleLaunch" [...] The most likely product is the brand new iPhone SE 4, which rumors suggest will pack a variety of powerful upgrades. [...] There are several other hardware possibilities for the February 19 launch. We're currently expecting at least three other products to debut in the near future: the M4 MacBook Air, an M3 iPad Air, and a new 11th generation base model iPad.

Reading into the teaser, the silver color does subtly give off Mac vibes, so perhaps the M4 MacBook Air is coming. The circle design in the video has some wondering if AirTag 2 could be the focus of the launch. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, however, doesn't believe that's the case. Gurman suggests the iPhone SE 4 will be the new product. That would make the circle a potential reference to the device's single rear camera.

The German antitrust authority has charged Apple with abusing its market power through its app tracking tool and giving itself preferential treatment in a move that could result in daily fines for the iPhone maker if it fails to change its business practices. From a report: The move follows a three-year investigation by the Federal Cartel Office into Apple's App Tracking Transparency feature, which allows users to block advertisers from tracking them across different applications.

The U.S. tech giant has said the feature allows users to control their privacy but has drawn criticism from Meta Platforms, app developers and startups whose business models rely on advertising tracking. "The ATTF (app tracking tool) makes it far more difficult for competing app publishers to access the user data relevant for advertising," Andreas Mundt, cartel office president, said in a statement.

Apple has released an official Apple TV app for Android phones and tablets that's now available in the Google Play Store. You can download it here. 9to5Google reports: The newest Apple app on Android has a bottom bar with Apple TV+, MLS (Major League Soccer), Downloads for offline viewing, and Search. [...] The video player takes after Apple TV on other platforms, with a portrait mode available. There are convenient shortcuts to activate picture-in-picture, which works inside the app (while browsing) and system-wide, and mute to bring up the system volume bar. Playback is smooth and more stable than other streaming services.

At launch, the Apple TV app lacks Casting support and there do not appear to be new episode notifications. If you're already signed into Apple Music, you have to log in again to Apple TV. Another notable aspect is support for Google Play Billing instead of requiring out-of-app sign-up on another device. This applies to both the Google TV app (and Apple Music) today.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Last night, Apple posted a new support document about migrating purchases between accounts, something that Apple users with long online histories have been waiting on for years, if not decades. If you have movies, music, or apps orphaned on various iTools/.Mac/MobileMe/iTunes accounts that preceded what you're using now, you can start the fairly involved process of moving them over.

"You can choose to migrate apps, music, and other content you've purchased from Apple on a secondary Apple Account to a primary Apple Account," the document reads, suggesting that people might have older accounts tied primarily to just certain movies, music, or other purchases that they can now bring forward to their primary, device-linked account. The process takes place on an iPhone or iPad inside the Settings app, in the "Media & Purchases" section in your named account section.

There are a few hitches to note. You can't migrate purchases from or into a child's account that exists inside Family Sharing. You can only migrate purchases to an account once a year. There are some complications if you have music libraries on both accounts and also if you have never used the primary account for purchases or downloads. And migration is not available in the EU, UK, or India. The process is also one direction, so you have to give some real thought to which account is your "primary" account going forward. If you goof it up, you can undo the migration. "The list of things you need to do on both the primary and secondary accounts to enable this migration is almost comically long and detailed: two-factor authentication must be turned on, there can be no purchases or rentals in the last 15 days, payment methods must be updated, and so on," notes Ars' Kevin Purdy.

Apple is developing robots for its smart home ecosystem, though mass production is unlikely to begin before 2028, according to widely reliable TF Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. The project remains in early proof-of-concept testing, with Apple exploring both humanoid and non-humanoid designs, he wrote in a post on X.

The company is focusing on how users interact with robots rather than their physical appearance, prioritizing sensing hardware and software as core technologies, Kuo said. The tech giant has taken an unusual approach by publicly sharing some of its robotics research during this early stage, possibly to recruit talent, the analyst noted. The proof-of-concept phase, which precedes formal product development, serves as Apple's testing ground for product ideas and core technologies. Apple's foldable phone project is also currently in the proof-of-concept phase, he said.

Apple has released emergency security updates for iOS 18.3.1 and iPadOS 18.3.1 to patch a zero-day vulnerability (CVE-2025-24200) that was exploited in "extremely sophisticated," targeted attacks. The flaw, which allowed a physical attack to disable USB Restricted Mode on locked devices, was discovered by Citizen Lab and may have been used in spyware campaigns; users are strongly advised to install the update immediately. BleepingComputer reports: USB Restricted Mode is a security feature (introduced almost seven years ago in iOS 11.4.1) that blocks USB accessories from creating a data connection if the device has been locked for over an hour. This feature is designed to block forensic software like Graykey and Cellebrite (commonly used by law enforcement) from extracting data from locked iOS devices.

In November, Apple introduced another security feature (dubbed "inactivity reboot") that automatically restarts iPhones after long idle times to re-encrypt data and make it harder to extract by forensic software. The zero-day vulnerability (tracked as CVE-2025-24200 and reported by Citizen Lab's Bill Marczak) patched today by Apple is an authorization issue addressed in iOS 18.3.1 and iPadOS 18.3.1 with improved state management.

The list of devices this zero-day impacts includes: - iPhone XS and later,
- iPad Pro 13-inch, iPad Pro 12.9-inch 3rd generation and later, iPad Pro 11-inch 1st generation and later, iPad Air 3rd generation and later, iPad 7th generation and later, and iPad mini 5th generation and later

Long-time Slashdot reader Shayde once restored a 1986 DEC PDP-11 minicomputer, and even ran Turbo Pascal on a 40-year-old Apple II clone.

Now he's exploring a 27-year-old Macintosh PowerBook G3 — with 64 megabytes memory and 4 gigabytes of disk space. "The year is 1997, and Apple is in big trouble." (Apple's market share had dropped from 16% in 1980 to somewhere below 4%...) Turns out this was one of the first machines able to run OS X, and was built during the transition period for Apple after Steve Jobs came back in to rescue the company from bankruptcy.
It's clearly old technology. There's even a SCSI connector, PCMCIA sockets, a modem port for your phone/landline cable, and a CD-ROM drive. There's also Apple's proprietary ports for LocalTalk and an Apple Desktop Bus port ("used for keyboards, mice, and stuff like that"). And its lithium-ion batteries "were meant to be replaced and moved around, so you could carry spare batteries with you."

So what's it like using a 27-year-old laptop? "The first thing I had to note was this thing weighs a ton! This thing could be used as a projectile weapon! I can't imagine hauling these things around doing business..." And it's a good thing it had vents, because "This thing runs hot!" (The moment he plugs it in he can hear its ancient fan running...) It seems to take more than two minutes to boot up. ("The drive is rattling away...") But soon he's looking at a glorious desktop from 1998 desktop. ("Applications installed... Oh look! Adobe Acrobat Reader! I betcha that's going to need an update...")

After plugging in a network cable, a pop-up prompts him to "Set up your .Mac membership." ("I have so little interest in doing this.") He does find an old version of Safari, but it refuses to launch-- though "While puttering around in the application folder, I did notice that we had Internet Explorer installed. But that pretty much went as well as expected." In the end it seems like he ends up "on the network, but we have no browser." Although at least he does find a Terminal program — and successfully pings Google.

The thing that would drive me crazy is when opening the laptop, Apple's logo is upside-down!

The UK government has ordered Apple to create a backdoor allowing access to encrypted cloud backups of users worldwide, Washington Post reported Friday, citing multiple sources familiar with the matter. The unprecedented demand, issued last month through a technical capability notice under the UK Investigatory Powers Act, requires Apple to provide blanket access to fully encrypted material rather than assistance with specific accounts.

Apple is likely to discontinue its encrypted storage service in the UK rather than compromise user security globally, the report said. The company would still face pressure to provide backdoor access for users in other countries, including the United States. The order was issued under Britain's 2016 Investigatory Powers Act, which makes it illegal to disclose such government demands, according to the report. While Apple can appeal to a secret technical panel and judge, the law requires compliance during any appeal process. The company told Parliament in March that the UK government should not have authority to decide whether global users can access end-to-end encryption.