Apple removed Jack Dorsey's offline mesh messaging app BitChat from the India App Store after a MeitY takedown demand under Section 69A. The notice names no specific illegal content, and India's Internet Freedom Foundation called the removal unconstitutional.

Apple's Apple Intelligence page states that Siri AI and other server-run features will carry daily usage limits, and that wider access will be available for a fee in the future. The wording suggests the paid tier will fold into existing iCloud+ plans rather than a separate 'Siri Pro' subscription.

Camera app Halide Mark III updated to version 3.2, adding dedicated iPhone 18 Pro support that removes the stock camera's four-stop aperture limit and adds ISO control, two film simulations, and a 16:9 shooting mode. It costs $69.99 one-time or $19.99 a year.

At Accelerate 2026, Amazon expanded Seller Assistant with persistent memory, plain-language automated workflows, guardrails, and the ability to execute actions rather than only recommend them. A new beta plugin connects Amazon selling data to Amazon Quick and Anthropic's Claude.

Google revealed Gemini 4 Argon, claiming frontier performance in software engineering, enterprise knowledge work, and cybersecurity defense, but is limiting first access to a set of trusted cyber defenders while it engages with the US government's pre-release model access process.

Apple Pay is now available in India, starting with Axis Bank credit cards on the Visa and Mastercard networks, usable in Wallet on iPhone and Apple Watch. RuPay and banks including HDFC, ICICI and SBI Card are not supported, and merchants must add terminal support for the service to work at a given…

Apple software chief Craig Federighi described the iPhone Duo as a device built around continuity, not a phone that happens to bend, in an interview. The foldable pairs a 7.6-inch inner display with a 5.4-inch outer display, and the conversation touched on the unfolding animation, a new hinge-angle…

Nikhil Gupta, who worked on Siri and Apple Intelligence at Apple, is launching szn in October as an AI agent that lives entirely inside iMessage, with no standalone app at first. Each customer gets a dedicated model plus an assistant with its own name, email address, and phone number so it can cont…

Apple Maps in iOS 27 now shows Local Lists: collections of nearby restaurants and attractions assembled from what people view, share, and interact with inside Maps. They sit between the editor-made Publisher Guides and the user's own auto-built Favorites guide, and are currently U.S.-only.

In a follow-up to his guide on moving credentials into Apple Passwords, Six Colors' Glenn Fleishman addresses the objection that a thief with the phone and its passcode reaches everything. Stolen Device Protection adds an hour-long delay plus a biometric check to sensitive account changes when away…

DoorDash says customers who order groceries through its AI features build baskets about 50 percent larger than those who do not, and buy 60 percent more unique products.

Xbox content chief Matt Booty says the company wants players to reach its games through purchases, subscriptions, cloud gaming and handheld devices, with Game Pass still central to the strategy.

Amazon Prime memberships now include the upgraded Alexa+ assistant at no extra cost, usable across Echo devices, Fire TV hardware and the Alexa app. Activation requires signing into Alexa with the same Amazon account used for Prime.

A venture capitalist connected the Instinct agent to his Resy account to chase a hard-to-get table. The agent polled the platform about 200 times an hour; Resy suspended the account and reinstated it two days later with a warning.

A self-hosted dashboard called OpenClaw Mission Control gives OpenClaw users a graphical view of running agents, spend, and scheduled jobs without touching the CLI. It runs entirely on the local machine, with no cloud service, accounts, or database.

Some Macs running macOS 27 show Apple Intelligence consuming 20-30GB of storage, well above Apple's published 14GB ceiling, and the toggle that used to prevent the download is gone.

Meta's Muse agent runs each user in a persistent Linux VM, and it will package up large parts of that machine's filesystem on request — a design Meta calls intended behavior.

Amazon cut Meta's Muse agent off from shopping on Amazon.com after failing to get Meta to exclude the site voluntarily. Amazon says Meta never told it Muse would access the store, that the agent does not identify itself as an AI, and that it appears to capture and store customer credentials.

General Motors will add Apple CarPlay and Android Auto back to its trucks later this year on the 2027 Chevrolet Silverado 1500 and GMC Sierra 1500, after dropping phone projection from its EVs in 2023. The phone interface shares the screen with GM's own trailering and Super Cruise views instead of …

The iOS 27.2 beta adds an anniversary alert that appears when you call someone whose important date is saved in Contacts. It builds on Call Context, the iOS 27 feature that surfaces details from email and other sources while a call is being placed.

A London tribunal heard that the UK will not confirm or deny a technical capability notice ordering Apple to weaken encrypted iCloud backups, which a civil-rights lawyer called farcical given the order is an open secret. Apple, Privacy International, and Liberty argue the secrecy blocks open justic…

A security researcher showed a single malicious extension can take over the built-in AI assistants in Chrome, Perplexity Comet, Edge, Opera Neon and Claude in Chrome, using a legitimate extension API rather than traditional malware. Five bug bounties paid out, two CVEs assigned, and Google and Micr…

A new benchmark put three leading models in control of robotic arms and gave them five instructions a safe robot should always refuse. Across 300 human-reviewed trials, OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra refused twice, Claude Fable 5.1 refused one task consistently and never the other four, and Ai2's MolmoAct2 n…

Axis Bank is actively testing technical infrastructure to support Apple Pay in India ahead of an expected October 2026 rollout. The integration will support tokenized credit and debit transactions over the Unified Payments Interface and card networks.

MapQuest refused to rename Lake Ontario to "Lake America" after a U.S. executive order, and users responded. The app is now the top free iPhone app in Canada and fourth in the U.S., with hundreds of thousands of downloads and a roughly 50x jump in map usage.

Qualcomm is raising chip prices by double digits starting September 1, passing through supplier cost increases. The move lands as Apple continues shifting toward its own C-series modems, cutting into Qualcomm's Apple revenue.

Forbes examines whether the upfront cost of a Mac Ultra with the M5 Ultra chip can replace a recurring $200/month AI coding service subscription. The analysis calculates break-even timelines and considers the trade-offs between local and cloud-based AI assistance.

As Tim Cook enters his final week as Apple CEO before becoming executive chairman on September 1, MacWorld reflects on his 15-year tenure — from supply chain master to the leader who made Apple a $3 trillion company while navigating privacy, antitrust, and the pivot to Apple Silicon.

Anthropic has launched a beta for self-hosted Claude Code sessions, letting teams and enterprise customers run their own Claude Code environments. The self-hosted mode keeps work isolated between developers and accounts, addressing the security and compliance requirements that have kept some organi…

Apple has approached news publishers to establish multiyear content deals that would give Siri AI access to current news and information. Unlike standard AI training deals with fixed fees, Apple would pay publishers per-use when their content is surfaced through Siri AI, with a reported nine-figure…

Meta has open-sourced Muse Glimmer, its latest generative AI model, alongside a 6,500-word manifesto from Mark Zuckerberg arguing that superintelligence should be broadly accessible rather than concentrated. The release marks Meta's latest push to position itself as the open-source alternative in t…

Anthropic now watermarks Claude's text for the EU AI Act. California wrote a stricter provenance law and left text out. Brussels legislated past the evidence.

Anthropic's Claude Code can now send messages between separate terminal sessions, eliminating the need to manually copy context between windows. The feature uses ListAgents and SendMessage tools to share summaries between running sessions while keeping history and files private.

A practical overview of the hardware options available for running AI models locally, from consumer GPUs to dedicated server builds, helping practitioners navigate the growing ecosystem of local AI infrastructure.

As AI chatbot referrals surge — $8 billion in AI-driven shopping expected this year — retailers like Ulta Beauty and Wayfair race to appear in ChatGPT and Gemini results while keeping purchases on their own sites to protect customer data and loyalty programs.

Google's Gemini-powered Ask Maps assistant adds agentic capabilities: ordering food from nearby restaurants along your route, checking hotel prices, and tracking train delays. The feature rolls out today with Square and Toast integration, with Uber Eats coming soon.

iOS 27 introduces FaceTime Dual Capture, a feature that lets users share video from both their front and rear cameras simultaneously during a call.

President Trump signs an executive order imposing a 15% tariff on imported polysilicon products, a crucial material used in semiconductor manufacturing and solar panels.

Sonos is aggressively integrating AI into its smart speaker ecosystem, but the utility of AI-powered features in a home audio system remains an open question. The company's push raises the broader question of whether AI features are solving real problems or are a solution in search of a market.

Google Health has enabled direct Fitbit data sync to Apple Health, closing a long-standing cross-platform gap. Fitbit users on iPhone can now export activity, sleep, heart rate, and other metrics to Apple's Health app without third-party workarounds.

Despite rumors of a Steam exit, Microsoft is actually deepening its PC gaming investment with more Xbox games on Steam, improved Game Pass integration, and a broader multiplatform strategy. The article clarifies Microsoft's actual PC gaming direction.

MacPaw, the developer behind CleanMyMac and Setapp, has partnered with Liquid AI to bring on-device AI processing to Macs. The partnership will integrate Liquid AI's efficient transformer architecture into MacPaw's utility suite, enabling private, local AI features without cloud dependency.

MacStories' analysis argues that the current explosion of AI-powered utility apps on the App Store is unsustainable, predicting a shakeout as the novelty wears off and users gravitate toward the few genuinely useful tools. The piece offers a strategic lens for indie developers navigating the AI gol…