YouTube video by Tech By Thaz

YouTube video by Tech By Thaz

I preordered my iPhone 18 Pro Max and got it on launch day, same as every year. I filmed an unboxing, got to the setup screen, and that's where things didn't go as smoothly as I had hoped. The first screen asks you to pick your region. In previous years, it's always been set to United Kingdom by default. All I've ever had to do is tap next. This time it was set to the Netherlands. Out of habit I'd already tapped next before I noticed, so I had to go back and scroll all the way down to find United Kingdom.

Gruber has a great post on his thoughts about the 'Surprise and Shine' event, and I've been thinking about one section in particular since I read it. On the iPhone Duo's right-side-only UI layout and whether it's a problem for left-handed users, he writes: This layout puts these controls on the right not because 90 percent of people are right-handed and Apple thinks lefties can get bent, but, I think (and so I've been told in conversations with Cupertinoites), because that's the nature of a book-like shape. The arrow keys on keyboards always fall on the right, publishers don't print left-handed books, and carmakers don't make left-handed steering wheels.

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Apple's first foldable iPhone is impressive for a first-generation product, but at $2,000, every compromise matters. Here's what stands out and what doesn't.

The iPhone 18 Pro is what I'd call an S year. From the outside the phone is identical to the previous model, but on the inside a lot has changed and that's where the upgrades are. Apple sells a lot of phones when the outside of the device changes, like the iPhone 17 Pro, which I see almost everywhere. People like to buy things, and they sure want to let the world know they have the latest. This has always been the case with iPhones. A design change is easy for the marketing department to go "hey look, it looks new" and iPhones fly off shelves.

The definitive iPhone 17 Pro Max one year review. 300 battery cycles, 10,000 photos, and the verdict on whether function over form paid off.

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Tim Hardwick on MacRumors: Apple may introduce an entirely new 13.8-inch OLED MacBook model in 2029, potentially creating a new product tier between the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro, according to an up...

The new iPhones launch in a week but thanks to the leaks we pretty much know everything about the iPhone 18 Pros. One rumour that has been mentioned multiple times is the main camera lens will have a variable aperture. But will both variants of the 18 Pro — the Pro and Pro Max — get this lens, or will it be limited to the bigger phone? I looked at all the previous Pro iPhone cameras and checked if the Pro Max variant has had anything extra going for it.

When the redesigned M4 Mac Mini launched it was a powerful, but small computer, it started at £599 and I wrote that the price was its best feature. In June this year, Apple raised prices across almost every Mac and iPad, and the Mac Mini went up to £799. Two years later we now have the upgrade to it. The headline upgrade is the M6 processor and it starts at £899. Since the MacBook Neo's intro, Apple has had to put up prices on a lot of its products and the Neo, launching at £599, now retails for £699.

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GTA 6 leaks are being spread around, and I think this could have easily been preventable. The first trailer came out in December 2023. Two and a half years later, there still hasn't been a single clip of any official gameplay. Pre-orders started a couple of months ago. Rockstar could have showed off something. Instead they kept it all under wraps, saving it for a later date and for some exclusivity with Netflix. That hasn't helped. I've seen a few of the leaked clips on X. I have no interest in going looking for more.

Apple just made the iPhone X obsolete. Nine years on it's still the last iPhone everyone I knew actually wanted, and nothing since has come close.

Aaron Perris on Twitter has unearthed AirPods with a camera in action on the macOS 26.7 RC. This has been rumoured for a while from Mark Gurman, and this leak cements it. Oops. I recently wrote about how smart glasses are not being welcomed by society, and I had to cut some bits out of that article so I didn't go off on a tangent about what Apple would or wouldn't do. But I did have thoughts. Apple is usually never first to the market with a new product, and this is one instance I was wishing they were.

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Ryan Christoffel writing for 9to5Mac on why the iPhone Ultra sounds truly deserving of the 'Ultra' name: My main arguments against the Ultra name involve hardware features. iPhone Ultra will lack the Telephoto camera that iPhone 18 Pro offers, and battery life might be worse than iPhone 18 Pro Max. Justifying 'Ultra' when certain features don't match the 'Pro' line seems tough.

I went in sceptical — no sci-fi, a 3,000-year-old story. The third act changed everything. My take on why The Odyssey is the best film Nolan has ever made.

I created a new iCloud account to test the first-time iPhone experience. Apple's 5GB free storage limit ruined it within minutes.

Sony is ending PlayStation physical discs in January 2028. Here's why going digital-only means no resale, no lending, and more control for Sony.

Apple, in a statement shared with MacRumors: The consumer electronics industry is facing an unprecedented challenge. The rapid expansion of AI data centers has created an extraordinary surge in demand for memory and storage. We have never seen a component price increase this much, this quickly. We have shielded our customers from these increases so far, but we have now reached a point where we need to begin raising prices on a number of products, including today's increases for iPad and Mac. We know this is not welcome news, and we are working tirelessly to find solutions.

Apple's UK price increases hit Macs, iPads, HomePods, Apple TV and Vision Pro today. Here's every new price, the rise on each, and the one exception.

The iPhone Air 2 could get a second lens, maybe even a telephoto. After checking my own lens usage, here's why I'd still take the Pro and its three lenses.

I've got the iOS 27 developer beta on an iPhone 15 Pro and I haven't had any major bugs so far. And the performance, I feel, is better than my iPhone 17 Pro Max running iOS 26. Apple could have done this ages ago, but they didn't. I am aware that this is because refinement alone doesn't sell phones, new features do. But it still makes me angry that it took iOS 27 to show what was possible. The last time we had a "Snow Leopard" year for iOS was in 2018 with iOS 12.

Apple's staggered iPhone release means no base iPhone 18 in September. The cheapest new iPhone this year could cost $1,299. Here's why that matters.

iPadOS 27 drops the 2018 iPad Pro after eight years of updates. I still think it deserved one more year, and I'm still not getting rid of mine.

My first phone was a Sony Ericsson W800i. Even though it was marketed as the Walkman phone, I was mostly pointing the camera at things I liked. A few years later I got my first iPhone, the 4S — and the iPhone 4S camera is what started everything. The first app I installed was Instagram. Back then, Instagram actually cared about 

Apple's WWDC 26 ditched the usual format and delivered something rare: a year focused on fixing foundations. My thoughts on Siri, Liquid Glass, and Tim Cook's farewell.  $