I'm a longtime iPhone user who has not upgraded to one of the iPhone 15 models. The iPhone 14 Pro is still an amazing device. It's practically the equivalent of the base iPhone 15. And I'm fairly confident that I could keep it for one more year after the iPhone 16 hits stores next September. But if the rumored Apple GPT is ready to debut with iOS 18 on the iPhone 16 series, I'll upgrade immediately, even if I have to pay more or get the iPhone 16 Pro Max for the best native generative AI experience.

The future of AI on the iPhone sounds promising already. A report from Korea says that the Phone 16 series will get a revamped Siri experience.

The rumor saying Siri will become the "ultimate virtual assistant" dropped on the heels of Samsug's big Gauss announcement. That's the Korean giant's ChatGPT equivalent that will probably debut on the Galaxy S24 as soon as January. That'll give Samsung a big head start. Also, it'll put plenty of pressure on Apple to deliver its own generative AI experience.

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When Humane unveiled the Ai Pin wearable on Thursday evening, we already knew everything about it. The specs, features, and price of the Ai Pin had leaked hours before the official announcement. Still, we lacked context and needed to see exactly how Humane pitched the device and whether that $699 price tag would be worth it.

After seeing Humane's display-less AI-based smartphone vision for the future, I can safely say that I'll never replace my iPhone with something like the Ai Pin. Never, ever, not in a thousand lifetimes. Not in this form.

The biggest problem with the device is the lack of a screen, which will make everything more difficult. Humane's desire to eliminate displays is noble, don't get me wrong. And I'd love to reduce my iPhone screen time with the help of AI. But we're not quite in a place where that can happen.

That said, I immediately thought about one use case scenario for the Humane Ai Pin where I'd have no trouble relying on an AI gadget rather than taking the iPhone from my pocket. It's running and walking sessions for me, but it could fit well with outdoor fitness activities.

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Airbus is testing a new type of experimental wing that the company hopes could revolutionize how airplanes fly. The new extra performance wing demonstrator took off for the first time on November 6, from the Toulouse-Blagnac Airport in France. The small Cessna Citation VII is part of Airbus’ new test for the wings, which it originally began working on in September 2021.

If the tests prove successful, Airbus could come up with a revolutionary way to enhance how airplanes use their wings, allowing them to cut down on fuel consumption. Airbus says the project is focused on “accelerating and validating technologies that will improve and optimize wing aerodynamics and performance for any future aircraft.”

Airbus equipped the Citation VII with the new experiment wing, which Airbus says is compatible with new engine solutions and configurations to help reduce the overall CO2 emissions of the company’s airplanes. Burning fossil fuels like those used in gasoline continues to help fuel the ongoing climate change our planet is experiencing, and Airbus is just one of many trying to take some steps to cut down on the emissions humanity’s different industries create.

The company hasn’t shared exactly what is new about the experimental wings, or how much it will dent the company’s carbon footprint if they are indeed successful and utilized further. However, this is just one of many projects that Airbus has been working on to try to reduce the emissions from airplanes and make them more fuel-efficient.

While we don’t know the details of the new wing experiment, it is comforting to see companies looking for better ways to cut the amount of fuel usage on massive vehicles like aircraft, and while it is no doubt heavily pushed by the need to cut the cost of fuel, it still plays out nicely for climate change, too.

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WhatsApp is Meta's (then Facebook's) most expensive purchase to date, with nearly $20 billion paid in 2014. It's also the most difficult one to monetize. The app is free, and everything in it is end-to-end encrypted. Placing personalized ads based on user-generated content and interests isn't possible. But Meta is looking to place ads inside WhatsApp. That's always been the case, and WhatsApp's head, Will Cathcart, confirmed as much in a recent interview.

However, WhatsApp won't put ads inside your chat inbox. Instead, you might see commercials in the status or channels. The latter is a feature that Meta seems to have copied from Telegram, which allows people to create communities inside WhatsApp. Before you get started with channels, you should know that's probably the only area in WhatsApp where texting isn't protected by end-to-end encryption.

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Apple is now pushing the iPhone 15 Pro as a complete camera replacement for video makers and even Hollywood studios. After promoting the smartphone with an Olivia Rodrigo video and then shooting an entire keynote with the latest iPhone, the company is now showing how movie makers could use the iPhone 15 Pro in their workflow.

In the 68-second-long ad, you see several people from the film industry, from camera operators to actors, makeup artists, and more. They're singing "There's No Business Like Show Business" by Irving Berlin while Apple highlights the iPhone 15 Pro's capabilities.

One of the main features of the new phones is the ability to capture in Log, which makes post-production easier, so editors can get the best visuals and lighting. In addition, with a USB-C port, iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max support recording ProRes video directly to an external storage drive, so users don't have to worry about running out of storage.

Lastly, the 15 Pro Max offers up to 5x optical zoom, which is also highlighted in the ad. Here's how Apple describes this latest campaign on its YouTube channel:

"iPhone 15 Pro is built for show business. Whether shooting cinematic stunts in ProRes 4K at 60 fps directly to an external drive or capturing a dramatic 5x optical zoom on Pro Max. New Log encoding makes ProRes even more powerful, enabling more range and flexibility for visual effects and color grading in post-production. iPhone 15 Pro is fully equipped to shoot your next post-apocalyptic alien car chase action-adventure blockbuster."

With the latest iOS 17.2 beta, Apple is now testing an upcoming exclusive feature for these iPhones: the ability to shoot spatial videos. These videos will later be playable on the Apple Vision Pro, which is expected to be released in early 2024.

Below, you can check Apple's "On with the Show" ad highlighting the new iPhones:

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Not long after Apple announced the Vision Pro at WWDC, rumors about its inevitable follow-up began to spread. In June, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reported in his newsletter that a second-generation headset was already in the works and that it would add several major new features. We're still months out from the launch of Apple Vision Pro, but now MacRumors has shared a report of its own spoiling even more Vision Pro 2 details.

According to MacRumors, Apple's second-generation headset "bears striking resemblance to the first-generation Vision Pro." It'll feature the same curved aesthetics and button placement as the original device, but the speaker will have a new home. MacRumors also claims that the device is known internally as Project Alaska and device identifier N109.

Sources say that early designs of the new headset do not include the rounded areas that house the speakers on the current model. Instead, Apple has placed "temples that are flat and uniform throughout their entire length" on the headset.

MacRumors' sources apparently saw documentation from Apple about the next Vision Pro as well. Those documents contain references to an audio accessory but don't provide any details. MacRumors suggests it could be an external speaker. They also reveal that Apple considered two designs for the top vents, "one being the same as the vents on the first-generation ‌Apple Vision Pro‌, and the latter featuring two clusters of tiny speaker-type holes."

Another potential change is simpler rear straps that look more like "flat straps commonly found on laptop bags or backpacks." Plus, the sources suggest that Apple might be sticking with the external battery pack, which will also be available for the Vision Pro.

MacRumors also provided a list of key hardware components for Project Alaska:

• 2 micro-OLED displays
• 1 TrueDepth camera
• 4 computer vision (CV) cameras
• 2 RGB cameras
• 2 low light infrared illuminators
• Semi-automatic interpupillary distance (IPD) adjustment
• Compass, ambient light sensor, magnetometer, accelerometer, gyroscope

The second-generation Apple Vision Pro is reportedly scheduled to enter the product validation testing (PVT) stage of development in 2025. That would align with a late 2025 or early 2026 release date for the next-generation headset. Of course, Apple's plans could change depending on a variety of factors, such as the success of the first-gen Vision Pro.

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Noise-canceling headphones have come a long way with their transparency modes, allowing users to hear real-world noise even when listening to something on their headphones. However, they don’t let you control what you hear. Now, researchers have created a set of AI noise-canceling headphones that will let you select what noises you want to hear so you can filter out unnecessary sounds but still keep an ear out for important things.

The new headphones use a system that the researchers call “semantic hearing,” it allows the headphones to stream captured audio to a connected smartphone, letting it cancel out any environmental sounds that the user doesn’t want to let through.

The system works through both voice commands and the smartphone app, and allows the wearer to select between 20 different classes of sounds that they want to let through the filters. These classes include sounds such as sirens, baby cries, speech, vacuum cleaners, and even bird chirps. A video detailing the system is embedded below.

The team presented its findings for the AI noise-canceling headphones during UIS ‘23 in San Francisco. The researchers say that they hope to release a commercialized version of the headphones down the line, allowing everyday users to take advantage of it.

Being able to let certain sounds through noise-canceling filters is important, especially if you wear your headphones out in public. Through the use of AI, these headphones let you control what you hear so that you can still cut yourself off from the world, but you’ll also be able to hear sounds that might indicate danger approaching or other important noises, like babies crying.

The team tested the headphones in multiple types of environments and found that the semantic hearing system works well, and that 22 participants even rated the target sound as being high quality compared to the original recording. In some cases, the system did struggle to distinguish between vocal music and human speech, but the researchers hope that more real-world data will help iron out those kinks and improve the outcomes.

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Earlier this year, Qualcomm announced a partnership with satellite connectivity provider Iridium to create Snapdragon Satellite, a proprietary technology to connect smartphones to satellites in order to provide emergency and other services. Ten months after the plan was announced, the companies are already calling it off.

As reported by CNBC, Qualcomm blames phone makers for the death of the feature, saying that there wasn't much interest from brands to include the proprietary feature. While the company says that they “successfully developed and demonstrated the technology," phone makers just “have not included the technology in their devices."

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Streaming subscriptions are getting increasingly more expensive. It's not just Netflix, as everyone in the industry continues to raise prices periodically. That's a good excuse to reconsider your streaming budget and ditch the services you're not watching.

But it also makes propositions like Verizon's rumored $10 Netflix-Max bundle very exciting. You can save money without ditching Netflix or Max, even if that means watching ads. That's because, yes, the $10 bundle only includes the ad-supported versions of Netflix and Max.

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This week, Apple started selling the new M3 MacBook Pro models. Praised by the new processor and a space black option, these laptops have a revamped GPU. While users buying the entry-level model will discover several new features compared to the previous 13-inch MacBook Pro, the real changes are available in the M3 Max processor, which BGR got a chance to test for our M3 MacBook Pro review.

Even though the new M3 MacBook Pro models are some of the best options in the market, repairability is still a major concern. To see if Apple has made any changes to this laptop, iFixit made its famous teardown so we could see these new machines from the inside.

To start, iFixit praises that the "unpopular and unrepairable" Touch Bar has been gone. But despite the modular design of these machines' internals, the company still says it's very hard to repair the new M3 MacBook Pro.

For example, if you choose 8GB of RAM for the M3 MacBook Pro, you won't be able to upgrade the memory later. The same is worth it for storage. If you choose 512GB, you can't upgrade it if you need more.

Although some influencers claimed that 8GB of RAM is enough for most users, it's important to note that Apple does RAM swapping, which uses a part of the SSD as extra memory. Over time, this will ruin your SSD, as it can only be rewritten a certain amount of times.

In addition, iFixit shows that it's impossible to repair the screen, Touch ID, and lid sensor without the customers going to Apple's own support. If they choose to repair these parts on their own, they'll just stop working. Regarding the screen, there's a weird issue in the top right corner that iFixit says won't go away if Apple doesn't repair the display itself.

With that in mind, iFixit gives the M3 MacBook Pro a 4/10 provisional score.

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