News & Reviews:   Apple

Twitter has delayed the relaunch of its Twitter Blue subscription to make various other changes to the service, as well as to avoid paying Apple’s 30 per cent App Store cut. Moreover, the revamped Blue subscription may not be available as an in-app purchase on the Twitter iOS app when it relaunches on the Apple App Store.

A few hours ago, there was a report by The Daily Star saying that Apple may be purchasing Manchester United Football Club for around $7 billion. The news broke out shortly after Cristiano Ronaldo announced upon leaving the club soon, but the acquisition rumour turns out to be false. 

Brazil and Apple haven’t been getting along recently as the country’s regulators are not too pleased with the latter’s decision to not include power adapters with the iPhone. After being fined ~RM89 million, Apple still failed to comply with Brazil’s requirement and now, the nation’s Federal District-based consumer protection regulator has seized iPhones from retail stores in the country.

Recently, rumours have been circulating recently that Apple is looking to replace the iPhone 15 Pro’s physical buttons with touch-sensitive surfaces. Now, we may have more concrete details of this taking place, as Apple supplier Cirrus Logic revealed the matter in its investor note last week.

Previously, we reported that Apple paused the production line for the iPhone 14 Plus to reevaluate the demand for the device, which has been rather disappointing. Now, it looks like the demand for the iPhone 14 Plus is continuing to lag, to the point that panel shipments for the device are expected to be ‘close to zero’ next month.

Apple released several unique new features with the launch of the iPhone 14 series in September and one of them, emergency SOS via satellite has finally gone live. Available for use to iPhone 14 series users in the United States and Canada yesterday, it allows you to send a distress message when there are out of cellular range and WiFi coverage.

Following years of users’ requests, Apple finally introduced the Always On Display feature on the iPhone 14 Pro series. However, its current implementation leaves a lot to be desired, with many users complaining about battery drain issues and that the Always-On Display looks too similar to when the iPhone is active.

Well, based on the latest iOS 16.2 beta version, it looks like the Always-On Display feature will improve in the next iOS update. In the aforementioned beta version, Apple added new options to the feature, giving users the choice of whether to show wallpaper and notifications when Always-On Display is activated.

Previously, we reported that Meta is laying off more than 11,000 employees amidst a decline in revenue and now, more details have come out regarding the company’s workforce reduction. One of the more interesting detail that emerged from the whole situation is that Meta had an ongoing project to develop a smartwatch that would compete with the Apple Watch but the development has been scrapped as part of the company’s cost-cutting effort.

Apple's first mixed reality (XR) headset could see the light sooner than we thought. According to the latest report, the device would enter mass production in March 2023, with the launch scheduled for April.

Apple will be making the activation keyword for Siri simpler. According to the latest report, the tech giant is removing the "Hey" from the "Hey Siri" voice command. If nothing went wrong, the switch would arrive in next year's major OS update.