Apple has unveiled a redesigned iPad Mini with a larger 8.5-inch OLED display, an A20 Pro chip, twice the peak brightness and slimmer bezels while maintaining roughly the same footprint. It starts at $699 ($200 more than its predecessor) and will be available November 6. The Verge reports: Despite having a slightly bigger display than the 8.3-inch screen on its predecessor, Apple says the device maintains the same small footprint thanks to bezels that are 24 percent slimmer. The iPad Mini is 5.4mm thick as well, making it thinner and lighter than the previous generation, according to Apple. It also comes with an IP67 rating for protection against water and dust.

Aside from an OLED display, the new iPad Mini features an upgraded A20 Pro chip. This enables support for some of Apple's new Siri AI features, including the ability to tweak the expressiveness and pace of the assistant's voice. Apple says the upgraded iPad Mini also comes with two times the peak brightness than the previous generation. iPad Mini's 12MP front-facing camera is now on the long edge of the device, making it easier for video calls in landscape orientation.

Following its October 13 HomeView launch, Apple is gearing up for its second hardware event of the month. The event is scheduled for October 28 in Los Angeles and carries the tagline "Pro and tell." 9to5Mac reports: Rumors say Apple has a slew of new products to announce at its next event, headlining by its first MacBook Pro with a touchscreen and OLED. According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, here's what's on the docket:

- New 14-inch and 16-inch touchscreen MacBook Pro models with OLED displays. They will also have a Dynamic Island for the first time and will be "significantly lighter" than the current models. The new MacBook Pro models are expected to be powered by the M5 Pro and M5 Max chips.
- A revamped iPad mini with an OLED screen, a "revamped speaker system," and a relocated FaceTime camera
- New iMac and entry-level 14-inch MacBook Pro models powered by the M6 chip, which will "look like their current versions."

Apple's first foldable iPhone, the $1,999 iPhone Duo, sold out within minutes of preorders opening, with every configuration slipping to late January 2027. "All color and storage combinations show an estimated ship date of January 25," reports 9to5Mac. "Some users are even seeing January 29 for their estimated shipping date." From the report: This is a combination of strong demand and severely constrained supply for iPhone Duo. It's impossible to know the exact balance between the two, though. Going into the launch, there were multiple reports suggesting iPhone Duo would be in short supply as Apple was still ramping up production. A report from Nikkei Asia last month said Apple was making just a few hundred iPhone Duo units per day, significantly behind the ramp of a normal iPhone launch.

Meta has released Muse Spark Open, an 816-billion-parameter open-weight model optimized to run locally across two 512GB M5 Ultra Mac Studios using Apple's MLX framework. Meta says it's the "most capable U.S. open-weight model to date." MacRumors reports: Muse Spark Open has 816 billion total parameters with 42 billion active parameters and a 1 million-token context window. It is meant for coding and agentic work, and Meta says it excels at extended tasks, multi-step reasoning, and software engineering. The new Muse model was tuned to run on Mac Studio, and Meta says the Mac Studio paired with Muse Spark Open is the "best way to run a powerful model on your own desktop."

From Meta: "Apple's unified memory architecture lets the M5 Ultra's integrated GPU use up to 512 GB per Mac Studio, so two machines can hold an entire model. And the chip's 1.2 TB/s of memory bandwidth is fast enough to read the small slice each token needs. The result is two Mac Studios behave like one supercomputer with a terabyte of unified memory." Apple hasn't released the 512GB Mac Studio as of yet, but it's supposed to be coming later this month. It won't be cheap, because the 256GB Mac Studio is already priced over $10,000.

Apple has unveiled the $299 HomeView, a 7-inch smart display that combines Siri AI, FaceTime, customizable widgets, and Apple Home controls in a countertop or wall-mounted design. It also acts as a Matter controller and Thread Border Router, supports up to six facial-recognition profiles, and can use personal context from messages, calendars, and email when paired with a nearby Apple Intelligence-capable iPhone. The Verge reports: The device's square shape makes it feel less imposing than larger smart displays like Google's Nest Hub Max or Amazon's Echo Show 11, and I can see it fitting nicely on my kitchen counter -- though it might be a hair too big for my bedside table. The HomeView is the centerpiece of Apple's new push into the home. It costs $299 and launches alongside a new collection of cameras, thermostats, and a door lock designed for Apple Home.

As a smart home hub, Matter controller, and Thread Border Router, the HomeView can orchestrate these and other Apple Home and Matter smart home devices. It's available in eight countries at launch: the US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, and India. Pre-orders are open now, with devices shipping November 13th.

No Man's Sky is coming to iPhone and iPad on October 28, more than a decade after its rocky launch and long-running redemption arc. The title will cost $19.99, but a free trial will let users try it out before purchasing. Ars Technica reports: It will run on devices as far back as the iPhone 11 and the third-generation iPad Air. No Man's Sky might not have the most cutting-edge AAA graphics (though they're still strong, and they've come a long way since launch via updates), but the game's uncommon method of generating galaxies of incomprehensible scale on device consistently for all players from a single-seed happening on a phone is remarkable for those of us who remember phones performing far behind consoles or desktop PCs.

This version of the game includes all of the content and systems updates to the game that have been added over the years -- the expansions that famously took the game from a rocky launch reception to a widely beloved redemption story. There are a couple of compromises, though, and it's similar to what we saw with No Man's Sky on the Nintendo Switch. Hello Games says the ability to build and explore player-made planetary settlements is limited to the iPhone 15 Pro and later, and multiplayer is not supported on any iOS device. "We are excited to see player feedback on iOS, and will support it appropriately based on how many folks are playing," the company says, leaving the door open to perhaps not supporting all future content updates if the player base isn't there to justify it.

A new open-source command-line tool called RemoveMacAI lets macOS 27 users disable Apple Intelligence and reclaim around 12GB or more of storage. MacRumors reports: In macOS 27, Apple removed the toggle to disable Apple Intelligence wholesale, and simply disabling individual features doesn't remove the models from your Mac's drive. As explained by the developer, RemoveMacAI gets around this by using a configuration profile to switch off Apple's own asset management service and remove the models.

It then configures the system so attempts to download the removed models are redirected to a closed local port, preventing them from immediately coming back. And it does all this without disabling System Integrity Protection (SIP) or manually deleting files from protected system locations, unlike some older tools have. The tool can free up roughly 12GB of space depending on which models are present on your Mac. That said, some users are reporting cases of Apple Intelligence models having taken up a lot more space, which they've now reclaimed.

Apple says it will tighten macOS Full Disk Access controls as increasingly capable AI agents raise the risks of apps gaining broad access to users' files, messages, mail, and browsing history. TechCrunch reports: Days after a journalist claimed that Meta's Muse app on Mac read their private messages -- a claim that Meta disputed -- Apple announced that it's introducing additional controls around a setting called "Full Disk Access" on macOS. The feature was designed to allow backups to function properly, but AI agents have now increased "the risks associated with this level of access," Apple said. [...] In Muse's case, the AI optionally allows users to enable Full Disk Access. This setting, Apple explains, gives an app permission to access files, mail, messages, and even browsing history.

"Some developers are using Full Disk Access in ways that could put users at risk, exposing everything on their systems... without users' full knowledge and understanding," Apple said in a new blog post aimed at developers. The company says that, going forward, it will introduce new controls aimed at ensuring that users who "genuinely wish to grant an app this extraordinary level of access" can do so only with "every explicit user action."

"Addressing this is critical. As AI agents become increasingly capable and autonomous, the risks associated with this level of access will grow substantially. We are committed to ensuring users clearly understand these risks before granting such access, so they can make informed decisions about their own data and privacy," Apple wrote.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: A company that makes phone hacking devices claims to have developed a solution that freezes iPhones in a state that lets cops more easily access sensitive data inside them, according to a video obtained by 404 Media. [...] The new technology to get around inactivity reboot was developed by Magnet Forensics, the company behind GrayKey, a popular tool sold to law enforcement agencies that allows them to unlock and access data stored in iPhones and Android smartphones. Magnet has developed a new device called GrayKey Preserve and a feature for its regular GrayKey devices called Evidence Preservation Mode, according to the video.

"This is an absolute game changer for iOS forensics and a function that I wish we had years ago," a Magnet employee says in the leaked video, specifically mentioning that the solution is targeted at the iPhone's inactivity reboot feature and the data it makes unavailable. GrayKey Preserve and Evidence Preservation Mode are also designed to combat another iPhone feature that automatically deletes certain data -- such as cached locations, and recently deleted photos and iMessages -- after a certain number of days. "We're gonna be able to preserve that data for an infinite amount of time."

[...] 404 Media shared a transcript of the video with Jiska Classen, a researcher at the Hasso Plattner Institute who studies iPhone security. While Classen said that it's impossible to know for sure how Magnet's new feature works based on the video, she posited some theories and agreed that it is "quite a game changer" or "at least puts things back to where they were before inactivity reboot." She thinks Magnet has found a way to manipulate the iPhone's clock, effectively "slowing down time" or even "stopping the clock from ticking, even after a reboot." Most likely, according to her, the GrayKey may disable the iPhone tasks that set data to expire. The "inactivity reboot" feature mentioned above was added to iOS in November 2024 and automatically restarts iPhones that have not been unlocked for 72 hours, making them harder for police to access using forensic tools.

HP is taking aim at Apple's MacBook Neo with the new OmniBook 5 14, a $699.99 Windows laptop that starts with an Intel Core 5 315 processor, 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage but includes an OLED display even on the base model. It's also slightly thinner and lighter than the Neo. The Verge reports: The OmniBook 5 14 can be configured much higher, with up to a Core 7 350 chip, 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD, but all models include a 1080p webcam, dual speakers, HDMI, 3.5mm audio jack, and just two 10Gbps USB-C ports. And while the inclusion of OLED across the range is a major draw to the new OmniBook, the base config only has a passable 1920 x 1200 resolution and 300 nits of max brightness on its non-touch panel. A touchscreen version will be available when the OmniBook 5 launches in October, but a version with a 2560 x 1600 resolution OLED and 400 nits of brightness isn't coming until March 2027.

While the OmniBook 5 14 doesn't seem poised to best the MacBook Neo in raw processing power (based on our other reviews of Wildcat Lake laptops) or screen brightness, it's quite thin, light, and colorful. HP even gave it the nicer, sleeker lid logo usually reserved for pricier models. It starts at just 2.56 pounds, and it's as thin as 0.46 inches / 11.7mm. That's slightly lighter and thinner than a Neo. And I'd expect its Wildcat Lake chips to offer some good-to-great battery life. But we'll have to see how it delivers in actual testing. HP also announced a new ProBook 4 G2iS that is the company's "thinnest business notebook," measuring in at 0.47 inches / 12mm. It'll launch in December with Intel Wildcat Lake chips, 8GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD, though pricing hasn't been announced.

"A federal jury in San Diego awarded Taction Technology more than $5.7 billion in damages Friday after finding that Apple infringed claims from two haptics patents," reports CNBC: Taction sued Apple in 2021 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California. The company alleged that Apple was improperly "capitalizing on Taction's innovation and success" by selling devices that infringed on its vibration technology, according to the complaint. Apple initially won dismissal in 2023, and the Federal Circuit later revived the case....

Taction argued that Apple's "Taptic Engine," which is embedded in its Apple Watches and iPhones, uses its inventions without proper license or authority.
Taction's lead counsel told CNBC "Taction waited five and a half years for this case to get to trial, so it was a long time coming."

CNBC also reported that the jury "did not find Apple's infringement willful" — and that Apple said they'd appeal.

Bruce66423 shares a report from The Guardian: A bipartisan pair of American politicians is telling Britain's most secretive court to stop hiding its handling of Apple's legal fight against a government demand to break into its customers' encrypted data, warning that Whitehall's taste for secrecy is 'needlessly' straining relations between the two allies. The letter (PDF), shared with the Guardian ahead of being sent to the investigatory powers tribunal (IPT) on Friday, is signed by the Democratic senator Ron Wyden of Oregon and the Republican congressman Warren Davidson of Ohio.

The row dates back to January 2025, when the Home Office served Apple with a technical capability notice under the Investigatory Powers Act, which requires companies to assist law enforcement in providing evidence. The UK government demanded that Apple provide a mechanism to access encrypted iCloud backups worldwide, a call the company met by withdrawing its Advanced Data Protection encryption feature from UK users the following month. Apple's challenge to that order at the IPT was later thrown out after the Home Office withdrew the original notice and issued a narrower one targeting only British users' data. "It is wholly inappropriate for a foreign executive body to attempt to dictate the distribution of powers within the US government, nor should it be permitted to use secrecy directives under the Investigatory Powers Act to frustrate Article I powers under the US Constitution," the pair wrote.

Wyden and Davidson write that Congress "is not only a co-equal branch of government, it is the First Branch," and argue that no government can be allowed to place "its demands beyond the reach of legislative inquiry."

"The UK government," they write, "cannot champion legislative oversight at home while using administrative gag orders to kneecap the constitutional authority of the US Congress."

Apple's new Audio Intelligence features for the Apple Watch Series 12 are drawing privacy concerns because they can process nearby conversations without explicit consent from everyone involved. "Live Rewind lets you instantly see the last 15 seconds of a conversation as text," Apple explains in its technical summary (PDF). "Siri Recap summarizes conversations throughout your day and produces high-level Apple Intelligence-generated notes so you can stay present in the moment and catch up later." The Register reports: The latest Apple Watch comes with Audio Intelligence, a set of AI audio processing capabilities tuned for the company's S11 chip. Its features include: Sound Recognition, Music Recognition with Shazam, Live Rewind, and Siri Recap. [...] With the double-press of the Digital Crown -- as Apple grandly refers to the button on its Watch -- Live Rewind takes in an audio stream from the Watch microphone, processes it in a Secure Exclave on the S11 chip, and routes the data to the user's nearby iPhone, which runs a speech-to-text algorithm on the 15-second audio segment. The resulting text is saved and the audio is discarded.

The wearer's Watch emits an audible tone, even in silent mode, to alert those in the vicinity and provides a visual cue for those able to see the face of the device. Nonetheless, bystanders alerted to the recording -- to the extent they recognize the meaning of the tone -- have not consented to being recorded, which is a legal requirement in 11 US states that have all-party consent laws.

Apple characterizes its implementation of brief eavesdropping as respectful of personal privacy. It makes that claim in a section titled, "How Live Rewind respects those around you," citing the audible chime and visual on-screen animation. Siri Recap, meanwhile, "summarizes conversations throughout your day and produces high-level Apple Intelligence-generated notes so you can stay present in the moment and catch up later."

This too, Apple describes as an act of respect. "By design, Siri Recap does not create a recording, does not produce a verbatim transcript, and does not identify and attribute speakers," Apple's technical documentation explains. "The output is a brief, high-level summary, comparable to notes a person might write after a conversation. There is no audible signal because no raw audio is retained, and there is no way to reconstruct the original audio from a Siri Recap or share raw audio with anyone."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Apple has unveiled the Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4 today during itsSeptember hardware event. The new models retain the signature designs of their predecessors but add a faster S11 chip, new health and fitness features, and the watchOS 27 software update announced atWWDC last June. Both the Series 12 and Ultra 4 run on the upgraded S11 chip, which Apple says delivers faster CPU and GPU performance, along with improved Siri capabilities. Apple is also expanding the smartwatch's wellness-tracking suite with a redesigned Health app that includes a Longevity tab with new metrics, like Health Age and a Readiness score.

There's also a new "Health Sensing System," designed with 32 electrodes for more accurate readings (the Series 11 only had two), photodiodes organized in a ring to capture light more efficiently, and new LEDs that allow heart rate measurements to be collected every 5 seconds, giving you a continuous stream of heart data throughout the day. Apple Watch Series 12 also includes faster charging, though battery life remains at 24 hours. Meanwhile, the Ultra 4 increases battery life to 50 hours.

WatchOS 27 also brings deeper Siri and Apple Intelligence integration, including AI-suggested apps, new one-handed gestures, expanded workout and women's health tracking, and Siri Recap for real-time transcription and translation.

Apple is introducing a new "Reference Image" mode on the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max that uses the camera sensor to digitally sign captured data and create an "unalterable" version of a photo, giving users a way to verify what the camera actually saw before any edits were made. The Verge reports: As AI-generated images and videos become more realistic, several new standards have emerged to label images not created by a human, such as SynthID, C2PA, and Meta's Content Seal. Apple is putting a twist on these methods by building authentication directly into its hardware.

Apple is letting developers access a Reference Image API across iOS, iPadOS, and macOS, which could eventually allow users to inspect these digitally-signed photos in third-party apps. The company says the iPhone 18 Pro lineup won't come with its Reference Image feature at launch in the European Union, but says users in the region will still be able to "develop and view" them in iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27.