To spice thing up, Apple is planning some bog changes in its launch event.

With the exception of irregular SE handsets and the recent iPhone 16e, in recent years, Apple has released its iPhones in a single batch at a big event at the start of fall. For the last decade that has almost always been September, slipping to October in 2020 thanks to the coronavirus pandemic.

This rigid schedule could be set to change next year, according to a new report in The Information. In a plan to "rejuvenate" sales, the iPhone 18 family’s launch will be split into two windows, according to three unnamed supply chain sources.

Under this schedule, high-end iPhones — the iPhone 18 Pro, iPhone 18 Pro Max and brand new foldable iPhone — would arrive in the fall as per usual. Then, in the spring, Apple will reportedly follow up with three cheaper handsets: the iPhone 18, the iPhone 18 Air and iPhone 18e.

This loosely seems to mimic Samsung’s staggered flagship phone release schedule, where the Galaxy S series arrives in January/February, with the foldable Galaxy Z range following in July/August.

However, it is a somewhat different proposition for Apple, as the second window will see the release of objectively less exciting — albeit cheaper — products. The second launch may not even warrant an actual live event, as it’s hard to imagine the same degree of excitement accompanying cut-back versions of six-month-old handsets.

It is far more likely that they will emerge via press release, as the iPhone 16e did.

Nonetheless, a possible change of schedule serves three useful purposes for Apple. The first is a useful element of upselling: if there aren’t any cheaper options in September 2026, then buyers who might have opted for the cheaper model but want a new iPhone right away will have no choice but to opt for the Pro.

Secondly, even without a full event, Apple has no problem getting headlines with new iPhones, which have an appeal that stretches well beyond the usual tech press coverage. Having an additional launch window means new iPhones will get media attention twice a year, rather than just once.

And that is important for the third point: things are getting a bit crowded. There was a time when Apple released a single iPhone each year, but that doubled with the Plus model in 2014 and then doubled again in 2019 with the introduction of Pro versions.

With the arrival of the iPhone Fold next year and the possible continuation of the ‘e’ line, we’ll be up to six — and that means that some new iPhone models will inevitably struggle to be seen.

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The world of artificial intelligence (AI) has taken several turns and right now a shocking development emerged that seems to be terrifying consumers.

For many people, the AI revolution is reshaping entire industries and markets in a frightening way. Companies are creating the type of technology that science fiction writers have long predicted could overpower humanity.

Others are more worried about their jobs being rendered obsolete, as AI systems demonstrate clear abilities to perform human tasks with extreme precision. Companies have quickly moved to eliminate positions that center around tasks such as data entry and customer service.

One company that is helping usher in the next phase of AI is Microsoft. However, the tech leader recently released a controversial feature sparking strong concern among its user base, which seems extremely worried about the consequences.

Over the past few years, Microsoft has worked hard to remain competitive in the AI market as startups such as OpenAI and Anthropic have made significant advances. Its Copilot AI chatbot remains a popular choice among users, although it has not caught up with ChatGPT.

Recently, however, Microsoft has made multiple AI-related announcements that many consumers likely find frightening. Last week, it released a detailed report describing a future in which most teams of office workers are composed of AI agents managed by humans.

A few days ago, though, the company announced plans to bring back an AI tool that generated a lot of controversy the last time they tried to roll it out. Originally introduced in May 2024, Recall is a Windows 11 feature that can take a screenshot of everything a user does before indexing and storing it in a matter of seconds.

Concerns about security and privacy violations quickly rose, prompting the company to push back the launch, originally intended for June 2024. But a year later, Microsoft is pushing forward with its plans to bring Recall to its Copilot+ PCs.

In a recent statement, Microsoft attempted to frame Recall as a powerful new feature that can save users time by allowing them to search more efficiently. "You are always in control of what snapshots are saved and can pause saving snapshots at any time," it promises users. However, this isn’t necessarily going to appease people’s anxiety.

"Even if User A never opts in to Recall, they have no control over the setting on the machines of Users B through Z," Ars Technica reports. "That means anything User A sends them will be screenshotted, processed with optical character recognition and Copilot AI, and then stored in an indexed database on the other users’ devices."

The outlet adds that this could allow the AI tool to collect any sensitive material from the user in question, which could include passwords, medical data, and messages sent through encrypted services.

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WhatsApp announced that its new AI feature embedded in the messaging service is "entirely optional". The only hitch is that it cannot be removed from the app.

The Meta AI logo is an ever-present blue circle with pink and green splashes in the bottom right of the Chats screen. Interacting with it opens a chatbot designed to answer any questions, but it has drawn attention and frustration from users who cannot remove it from the app.

It follows Microsoft's Recall feature, which was an always-on tool - before the firm faced a backlash and decided to allow people to disable it.

"We think giving people these options is a good thing and we're always listening to feedback from our users," WhatsApp told the BBC.

It comes the same week Meta announced an update to its teen accounts feature on Instagram.

The firm revealed it was testing AI technology in the US designed to find accounts belonging to teenagers who have lied about their age on the platform.

Meta says the feature is only being rolled out to some countries at the moment and advises it "might not be available to you yet, even if other users in your country have access".

As well as the blue circle, there is a search bar at the top inviting users to 'Ask Meta AI or Search'. This is also a feature on Facebook Messenger and Instagram, with both platforms owned by Meta.

Its AI chatbot is powered by Llama 4, one of the large language models operated by Meta.

Before anybdy ask it anything, there is a long message from Meta explaining what Meta AI is - stating it is "optional". On its website, WhatsApp says Meta AI "can answer your questions, teach you something, or help come up with new ideas".

So far in Europe people aren't very pleased, with users on X, Bluesky, and Reddit outlining their frustrations - and Guardian columnist Polly Hudson was among those venting their anger at not being able to turn it off.

Dr. Kris Shrishak, an adviser on AI and privacy, was also highly critical, and accused Meta of "exploiting its existing market" and "using people as test subjects for AI".

"No one should be forced to use AI," he told the BBC.

"Its AI models are a privacy violation by design - Meta, through web scraping, has used personal data of people and pirated books in training them.

"Now that the legality of their approach has been challenged in courts, Meta is looking for other sources to collect data from people, and this feature could be one such source."

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Mega founder and social media mogul Mark Zuckerberg believes that artificial intelligence (AI) personas could step in to fight the loneliness epidemic.

In an interview with podcaster Dwarkesh Patel recently, around the time Meta released a new programming interface for its AI models, Zuckerberg suggested his company’s increasingly integrated AI assistants and chatbots could help Americans make up for the friends they wish they had in their lives.

"The average American has fewer than three friends," he said. "The average person has demand for meaningfully more, I think it’s like 15 friends or something."

"There’s a lot of questions that people ask of stuff, like, 'Okay, is this going to replace in-person connections or real life connections?'" he continued.

"My default is that the answer to that is probably no. I think that there are all these things that are better about physical connections, when you can have them, but the reality is that people just don’t have the connections and they feel more alone a lot of the time than they would like."

Zuckerberg conceded that while the field of AI companions is "very earlier," largely consisting of disembodied chatbots, such relationships will grow more sophisticated over time as "the personalization loop kicks in."

The world will adjust to the demand for AI friends, he said, and we will "find the vocabulary as a society to be able to articulate why that is valuable and why the people who are doing these things, why they are rational for doing it and how it is adding value for their lives."

Early forays into AI companions have raised some ethics concerns, including that digital friends might expose underaged people to sexually explicit themes or offer unsound mental health advice.

User-made AI bots have been found making up fake credentials about being licensed therapists, according to 404 Media, while a man who said he planned to kill the queen of England in 2021 had received encouraging messages when he told a chatbot he was an "assassin."

Regardless of if AI is the cure, millions of Americans are searching for some way out of daily loneliness, a condition that afflicts 20 percent of U.S. adults, according to an October poll from Gallup.

A 2024 poll from the American Psychiatric Association found that 30 of adults say they have experienced feelings of loneliness at least once a week over the past year, though two-thirds said technology “helps me form new relationships.”

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Apple may face possible criminal charges after a U.S. federal judge ruled the tech giant violated an antitrust order related to App Store restrictions — and singled out CEO Tim Cook for allegedly rejecting his deputies’ advice to comply with the ruling.

In an explosive decision last 30 April, US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers wrote that Cook "chose poorly" when he directed his charges to allegedly defy a court order in connection with Apple’s long-running dispute with Epic Games.

The "Fortnite" maker accused Apple of anticompetitive behavior as it imposed stiff developer fees, resulting in a 2021 injunction that required Apple to allow developers to offer users alternative ways to pay for services and subscriptions outside the App Store.

"{Internally, Philip Schiller had advocated that Apple comply with the Injunction," Rogers wrote in the ruling, referring to Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing.

"But Tim Cook ignored Schiller and instead allowed Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri and his finance team to convince him otherwise," the judge wrote in a sharply worded opinion.

"Cook chose poorly."

Rogers also accused another top Apple executive, Alex Roman, of having "outright lied" during the iPhone maker’s high-profile legal battle with Epic Games over its controversial App Store fees.

"To hide the truth ... Roman ... outright lied under oath," Rogers wrote, stating that Apple “adopted the lies and misrepresentations to this Court."

In the extraordinary ruling, Rogers, who was appointed to the federal bench by Barack Obama, made it clear that this was not a case of misunderstanding or negligence.

The evidence "more than meets the clear and convincing standard to find a violation," Rogers ruled as she referred the matter to the US Attorney’s Office to consider criminal contempt charges against Apple and relevant individuals.

The 2021 injunction at the center of the Apple-Epic Games legal battle barred the tech behemoth from preventing developers from including in their apps "buttons, external links, or other calls to action" that direct users to alternative purchasing methods outside of Apple’s in-app payment system.

The company was also barred from stopping developers from communicating with customers "through points of contact obtained voluntarily from customers through account registration within the app."

Roman, who holds the title of Apple’s vice president of finance, was accused by the judge of misleading the court in connection with the company’s controversial 27 percent commission on purchases made outside the App Store.

According to court documents, Roman falsely testified that Apple did not evaluate the costs developers would face when using alternative payment methods for linked-out purchases.

However, the judge found that Apple had in fact considered those external costs and intentionally set its commission high enough to exceed them, undermining the credibility of Roman’s claim.

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Huawei wants to become the Asian Nvidia for some time, and now, the South China Morning Post reports the company has launched a new AI infrastructure architecture set to rival the US chip giant’s NVL72 system.

Nvidia’s NVL72 links 72 GPUs using NVLink technology, allowing them to function as a single, powerful GPU. Built for trillion-parameter AI models, it delivers real-time inference at speeds up to 30 times faster than previous systems by avoiding traditional data transfer bottlenecks.

SCMP said Huawei’s rival to this, the CloudMatrix 384 Supernode, has been described as a "nuclear-level product" by unnamed Huawei sources. According to reports, it uses 384 Ascend 910C chips to deliver 300 petaflops of dense BF16 compute, that's almost double the 180 petaflops offered by Nvidia’s NVL72.

The CloudMatrix 384 Supernode has so far been deployed at Huawei’s data centers in Wuhu, a city in central Anhui province, the report says.

Writing about the new product, SemiAnalysis confirms this rack-scale solution competes directly with Nvidia’s GB200 NVL72 and, in some metrics, outperforms it. The site says that despite sanctions, China’s domestic semiconductor capabilities are growing and Huawei’s strength lies in system-level engineering, including networking, optics, and software.

While the Ascend chips rely heavily on foreign supply chains, such as HBM from Samsung and wafers from TSMC, Huawei has managed to skirt export controls through complex sourcing strategies.

The CloudMatrix 384 doesn’t only outperform the NVL72 in terms of compute, it also offers 3.6x aggregate memory capacity and 2.1x more memory bandwidth. However, something Huawei is likely less keen to shout about is that it consumes nearly four times the power.

SemiAnalysis points out that in China this is less of an issue than you might think. Abundant power generation means efficiency is less of a constraint compared to in the West, and China is expanding its energy grid rapidly, supporting such power-hungry AI infrastructure, even when supply outstrips demand.

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