Proton Data Breach Observatory reports as soon as your personal data hits the dark web
Security-conscious readers probably already use the data breach alert site Have I Been Pwned, but a new Proton website is aiming to alert you at an earlier stage with what the company says will be near real-time reporting. The company behind ProtonMail says it has launched the Data Breach Observatory because it can sometimes take too long to find out when your personal data has been made available for sale on the dark web … more…

Read more »

US tariffs on Chinese imports affecting Apple are halved; threatened raises suspended
Apple and/or its customers were facing billions of dollars a year in additional costs after increases to US tariffs on Chinese imports imposed by the Trump administration earlier this year. The company had initially absorbed these costs, but it was unclear how long that might last, with future price rises seeming likely. There’s some good news today, however, with Trump halving the additional tariffs imposed after meeting with China’s President Xi. Additional tariff increases that were scheduled to come into effect shortly have also been suspended … more…

Read more »

Apple Watch Ultra 3 review: A leap forward towards perfection
Macworld At a glanceExpert's Rating Pros Huge long-lasting battery Robust design Satellite connection High blood pressure notifications Cons Takes a while to charge fully Our Verdict It’s not cheap, but the Apple Watch Ultra 3 is worth Considering for its mighty battery alone. A good choice for outdoorsy Apple fans. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Price When Reviewed$799 Best Prices Today: Apple Watch Ultra 3 Retailer Price $779 View Deal Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Whereas the Apple Watch Ultra 2 offered very minimal upgrades two years ago, the Ultra 3 is a complete overhaul of Apple’s rugged outdoor smartwatch. In addition to the expected leap to a new chip, the manufacturer has given the device a longer-lasting battery and a bigger and better screen. There is also new connectivity that could come in handy on wilderness hikes. In addition to the switch from LTE to 5G, the smartwatch can use satellite connections to contact emergency services or share your location with contacts. So it’s not a minor update. But is it a worthwhile one? Read on to find out. Apple Watch Ultra 3: Bigger and better display If you place the Ultra 1 and Ultra 3 next to each other, you’l notice how thin the display edges have become. Apple says they’re 24 percent thinner, while the display area has increased by five percent. Apple Watch Ultra 3 (left) and Ultra 1 (right) Apple has also improved the screen technology. As a result, the contents of the display can be seen sharply and clearly even from unfavourable angles. Last but not least, scratch resistance is excellent. I tried several times to scratch the screen with my keys, without success. Apple Watch Ultra 3: The perfect hiking companion I took the Ultra 3 on a three-day hike in the Steinernes Meer to see how it behaves under stressful conditions. On the battery front, it lived up to Apple’s promises, lasting almost two days on a single charge. I fully charged it on Thursday evening and went to bed with it. On Friday, we started our multi-day tour in Schönau, and the watch recorded a six-hour hike; I had loaded it with offline maps of the area and used it as a satnav. On the second day, we had a long and strenuous hike lasting 11 hours, of which the watch recorded eight. I only put it on a power bank in my bag towards the end of the tour. Fortunately, I didn’t have to make an emergency call on the tour, but the Ultra 3 indicated with its satellite icon that network coverage is almost non-existent in the high mountains. On the Ingolstädter Haus, you had to go as far as the cable car ascent to send a message; during the three days on the trail, mobile coverage was spotty at several locations. Having the satellite connection was a reassuring backup for emergencies. On the negative side, the Ultra 3 with its dual-band GPS still had problems finding its exact location in certain locations, such as between two high mountain faces. During the ascent via the Saugasse to the Kärlinger Haus, the WorkOutDoors app reported several times that I had deviated from the route, even though this is practically impossible: a single path leads to the plateau, which is bordered on both sides by the Sigeretplatte and the Simetsberg. Nevertheless, you can clearly see from the recorded route that the Ultra 3 made several mistakes. Halyna Kubiv / Foundry Despite these quibbles, the Ultra 3 is the perfect companion for multi-day hiking tours. The large battery easily lasts for two days, even if you navigate using the watch. And the new satellite antenna ensures a connection even in remote locations. The only thing Apple still can’t do magically is GPS. The Ultra 3 sometimes loses its exact location in gullies and ravines, and hiking apps can falsely report that you have strayed from the route. With or without the Ultra 3, you still have to rely on your own senses and not rely entirely on digital assistance. Apple Watch Ultra 3: Gold standard for heart-rate measurement The Apple Watch Ultra 3 measures heart rate very accurately. As a comparison reference device, I wore the Polar H10 chest strap during training sessions and synchronised the data with Apple Health. On my first attempt, I did two stretching sessions over the weekend. The two devices, Ultra 3 and Polar H10, show a correlation of 96.1 percent cumulatively across all workouts. This means that the values from the Apple Watch Ultra 3 correspond exactly to the values from the Polar H10 96.1 percent of the time. The latter is a gold standard in heart rate measurement and is even used in clinical studies, so it’s a strong benchmark for accurate performance.

Read more »

'Long Island Compromise' drama looks for new home after Apple TV passes
The television dramatization of best-selling novel "Long Island Compromise" has been dropped by Apple TV before production begins.Apple TV was originally launched as Apple TV+Taffy Brodesser-Akners novel had been the subject of a bidding war between studios, before being successfully bought by Eden Productions. That meant the project was then offered to Apple as Eden's executive producer Richard Pepler is nearing the end of a five-year deal with Apple TV.According to Variety, Apple turned down the project. It's not clear how far the show got with Apple TV — the novel was subject to a bidding war before its July 2024 publication. Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums

Read more »

This Apple News+ word game is better than Wordle, Connections, and Strands
Macworld Back when News+ launched in 2019, the value was somewhat debatable. While the $9.99 service offered access to hundreds of magazines as well as “premium online publications,” it paled in comparison to the New York Times’ All-Access subscription’s array of content, including recipes, sports, podcasts, and, most importantly, games. Over time, that began to change. iOS 16.5 added a dedicated Sports tab for scores, standings, and related coverage, and later that year, Apple began offering daily crossword and crossword mini puzzles with iOS 17, and introduced News+ Food with restaurant reviews and recipes earlier this year. In late 2023, Apple hiked the price from $9.99 to $12.99 a year, but it’s still a better value than when it launched for 30 percent less. It’s a little Google News, a little Zinio, and a little ESPN all rolled into one. I’m an Apple One subscriber, but even if I dropped that, I’d still subscribe to Apple News+. But the reason isn’t the news. It’s the games. Apple News+ includes five puzzles that subscribers can play each day: Crossword and Crossword Mini, Quartiles, Sudoku, and Emoji Game. The crosswords and sudoku games are self-explanatory, and Quartiles is a fun Boggle-esque word game that challenges you to create compound words from a set of 20 fragments. Apple’s Emoji Game is a perfect mix of fun, challenging, and addicting.Apple They’re all fun, but ever since Emoji Game arrived on July 17 to mark World Emoji Day, I’ve been hooked. It’s as addictive as Wordle, more challenging than Strands, and as clever as Connections. The concept is simple. Each day, there are three short phrases with blanks corresponding to an emoji-based word. Each phrase has a clue that is only partially revealed, so the challenge is two-fold: figure out the phrase with only a part of a clue, and then figure out which emoji sequence fills in the missing letter. A perfect score is 6, and each wrong answer or clue reveal adds a point to the score. Some emoji clues replace full words, others are parts of words or span two words. For example, Wednesday’s first puzzle showed “Intelligent birds…” under a 7-letter word broken down into one three-word and one four-word blank. Tapping the clue revealed “Intelligent birds in the crow family,” and the answers were MAG (an emoji of an open magazine) and PIES (two pie emojis). It’s harder than it looks and requires a specific way of reasoning to figure out. Sometimes you need to figure out the phrase first, other times, recognizing one of the emoji clues will help make sense of a phrase. It’s fun, challenging, and clever, and only takes a couple of games to get completely hooked. It’s the first thing I do in the morning now, even before Wordle and Connections. You’ll need to be an Apple News+ subscriber to play ($12.99 per month, free one-month trial), however, and it’s not so easy to find if you haven’t played before. To get to the games tab on an iPhone, launch the News app, then tap the search icon at the bottom right of the menu bar, and then navigate to Puzzles. There you’ll find the Emoji Game with today’s games spotlighted along with a full archive going back to July. If you can’t stop playing, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Read more »

Dynamic Island Could Be Coming on the iPhone 17e
Digital Chat Station, a leaker on the Chinese social media platform Weibo, reports that the iPhone 17e could be receiving the Dynamic Island feature. Information was shared in the comments section of a post that talks about the company’s plan to give the iPhone 18 Pro a variable-aperture lens system. Dynamic Island is an interactive […] The post appeared first on iLounge.

Read more »

iPhone 18 Pro Could Be Receiving A Variable Aperture Camera
A Chinese leaker with alleged Apple supply chain-sourced information reveals that the iPhone 18 models are anticipated to have lens with variable aperture. Digital Chat Station, an account on Weibo, reports that the variable-aperture system will be seen on the 48MP Fusion camera for both models of the iPhone 18 Pro. This would be a […] The post appeared first on iLounge.

Read more »

Ghost Posts Coming To Threads App
Threads will be receiving support for disappearing posts called Ghost posts, as recently announced by Meta. These pieces of text will be archived automatically after 24 hours, and any replies from the ghost post will be sent to the user’s inbox as direct messages. They appear in the form of chat bubbles with a background […] The post appeared first on iLounge.

Read more »

Apple releases Pico-Banana-400K dataset to AI research community
If nothing else, Apple is participating in the artificial intelligence community. On Wednesday, the company released Pico-Banana-400K, a highly curated 400,000-image research dataset which was built using Google’s Gemini-2.5 models. The research team, which published a study entitled “Pico-Banana-400K: A Large-Scale Dataset for Text-Guided Image Editing,” released the full 400,000-image dataset under a non-commercial research […] Source

Read more »

Apple distributes iOS 26.1 Release Candidate to both the developer and public beta tester communities
Apple’s first major update to iOS 26 is en route in the form of iOS 26.1, and on October 28th, the Release Candidate went out the door to the developer community with a public release expected sometime next week. Here’s what can be expected from the update at this point: The betas can be installed […] Source

Read more »

Macworld Podcast: iPhone 18 and what we know (so far)
Macworld Apple has big plans for the iPhone 18 lineup in 2026. We discuss the latest reports in this episode of the Macworld Podcast. This is episode 957 with Michael Simon, Jason Cross,  and Roman Loyola.  Watch episode 957 on YouTube Listen to episode 957 on Apple Podcasts

Read more »

Apple eases App Store review rules for developers
Developers now get more flexibility with the App Store review process, as they can upload new materials while an app is still under review. (via Cult of Mac - Your source for the latest Apple news, rumors, analysis, reviews, how-tos and deals.)

Read more »

Sony noise-cancelling headphones that normally cost $449.99 just marked down to $329.99
Macworld TL;DR: Get a pair of Sony WH-1000XM6 Wireless Headphones on sale for $329.99 (reg. $449.99). Good headphones should sound clear, feel comfortable, and block distractions without constant adjustment. These Sony WH-1000XM6 hit that balance with powerful active noise canceling, clear audio, and long battery life, and you can pick up a pair for only $329.99 (reg. $449.99). These over-ear headphones use Sony’s QN3 processor to adapt to your environment in real time, reducing airplane noise, traffic, and background chatter. If you need to hear what’s happening around you, you can switch to Ambient Sound mode or lower the volume automatically by speaking. Audio quality is detailed and balanced, with support for high-resolution playback and LDAC for wireless streaming. Sony’s DSEE Extreme processing restores clarity in compressed tracks, and the beamforming microphones make calls sound clean even in busy spaces. The design is comfortable with soft ear cushions, an adjustable headband, and a foldable frame for travel. Battery life lasts up to 30 hours with noise canceling on, and a three-minute charge adds hours of playback. This open-box model comes verified in new condition with all accessories and a one-year warranty. Right now, it’s only $329.99 to get a pair of Sony WH-1000XM6 Wireless Headphones, but it won’t stay that way. Sony WH-1000XM6 Best Wireless Noise Canceling Headphones (Open Box)See Deal StackSocial prices subject to change.

Read more »

The AirPods Max USB-C is $49 Off
Amazon has the AirPods Max marked $49 off. If you are looking for over-ear headphones to give you an immersive listening experience and give you your money’s worth, look no further. The AirPods Max features personalized spatial audio and dynamic head tracking, and is powered by the H1 chip and has a custom acoustic design […] The post appeared first on iLounge.

Read more »

Swift SDK Coming To Android
A sneak peek for the release of Swift SDK for Android was uploaded this week. SDK allows android apps to be developed in Swift with the use of tooling that are officially supported. It aids developers in building Android apps using Swift, making coding on Android and iOS easier with official toolings. The Swift Programming […] The post appeared first on iLounge.

Read more »

Two Day Developer Program by Apple Held During the M5 Vision Pro Launch Week
The M5 Vision Pro launch week was used by Apple to have a program called “Meet with Apple” for developers where they focus on developing interactive apps and immersive media for the visionOS 26. Developers were invited by Apple to Cupertino where their Developer Center is located. The company held lectures on how to use […] The post appeared first on iLounge.

Read more »

Vapor Chamber May Be Coming To The M6 iPad Pro for Improved Cooling Performance
Mark Gurman from Bloomberg reports that they plan to give the iPad Pro a vapor chamber similar to the iPhone 17. Since the devices are getting powerful chips, they will need a stronger system to help cool down the iPad Pro. This could come as early as the next generation for the iPad Pro, the […] The post appeared first on iLounge.

Read more »

How to use Reduce Interruptions on iOS 26 and what it does
The Reduce Interruptions Focus Mode aims to use Apple Intelligence to prioritize notifications to cut them down, yet not have you miss anything important. Here's how to use it.The Reduce Notifications Focus ModeA strength of Apple Intelligence is that rather than some separate ChatGPT-like app, its features are woven into all aspects of the iPhone, iPad, and Mac. But that also makes it confusing when Apple promotes some feature but doesn't say where it fits."For example," said Craig Federighi at the WWDC 2024 launch, "your iPhone can prioritize your notifications to minimize unnecessary distractions while ensuring you don't miss something important." Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums

Read more »

TerraMaster D9-320 review: Nine drives, one Mac
If you have a lot of hard drives to connect to your Mac, the TerraMaster D9-320 will get you there, with good price to performance.TerraMaster D9-320Cloud storage has done something funny to local storage. All the tech giants are happy to sell you Internet based storage relatively inexpensively, which has led to Apple's hardware having smaller internal storage now than it did in the shift to SSD as a main storage medium about a decade ago.Even now, though, some jobs just need dozens of terabytes accessible at decent speeds, cost-effectively. There is exactly one Mac tower these days that can hold hard drives internally, and doing it with the Mac Pro is not easy like it was with the first five Intel Mac Pro towers, nor is it inexpensive. Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums

Read more »

Apple adds new App Store submission and marketing features, will phase out promo codes in 2026
Apple is rolling out a round of enhancements that will make it easier for developers to submit, manage, and market their apps on the App Store. Here’s what’s new. more…

Read more »