Tap to Pay on iPhone hits 50 countries as it launches in Singapore
Apple’s Tap to Pay on iPhone is intended to offer the ultimate in convenience and affordability for small businesses looking to accept contactless payment from both mobile wallets and physical cards. The feature is today continuing its global rollout, with Singapore the latest country to get the technology … more…

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Alliance Calls for Cyber U to Stem Tide of Nation-State Attacks
The Internet Security Alliance says a virtual cyber academy is needed to counter nation-state attacks and ease the workforce shortage that leaves government and industry systems exposed. The post appeared first on TechNewsWorld.

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Apple pushes back on India's iPhone security app install order
Apple is planning to tell the Indian government it won't comply with an order to preinstall a state-backed app on iPhones, as doing so would introduce big security and privacy issues.India wants a security app preinstalled on new iPhones - Image Credit: AppleOn Monday, the Indian government issued a directive to smartphone producers, demanding they preinstall a state-owned cybersecurity app on their devices. As expected, Apple intends to resist the order.Sources of Reuters say that Apple's response will not comply with the plan. Instead, Apple will tell the government that it doesn't follow mandates to preinstall specific apps anywhere in the world. Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums

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Apple owes its greatest strength in AI to Giannandrea
We've seen it already — many stories covering John Giannandrea's early 2026 retirement from Apple suggest his departure is the result of many failures. The reality of his tenure at Apple is much more complex.Apple's on-device AI strategy is thanks to John GiannandreaWhen John Giannandrea joined Apple in April 2018, it was seen as a triumphant win for the company's work in machine learning, Siri, and autonomous vehicles. He was placed over multiple large divisions, and succeeded in creating a roadmap of technology in the space that helped lead Apple to become what it is today.You're probably not going to find many headlines or articles discussing what Giannandrea actually accomplished at Apple, and the market is reacting accordingly — meaning not at all. It's likely you'll see things like "Failures in Siri and AI lead to Giannandrea getting the boot," which doesn't appear to be true. Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums

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As Apple reboots its AI work, OpenAI ramps up the pressure by declaring ‘code red’
As Apple loses its AI head and reboots its work with a restructure, OpenAI is ramping up the pressure by declaring “code red.” Concerned about being overtaken by Google’s Gemini, CEO Sam Altman has said that all of the company’s efforts will be devoted to improving the quality of ChatGPT … more…

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Apple’s new AI leader has one job: Save the entire industry
Macworld You remember that dress? You know the one. Wanna feel old? That was 10 years ago. Anyway, if you’re nostalgic for those heady days of 2015 when people looked at something and were 100 percent sure they were right and the people who saw it differently were wrong, just ask someone their opinion on AI. The Macalope has noticed lately that AI is a real divider. Many people now simply view it as normal and use it all the time. Certainly, lots of developers do but also, honestly, just everyday users. A lot of other people, however, see it as an utterly useless abomination, a harbinger of the downfall of society. Today we’re going to figure out who’s right. Okay, not really. Because the Macalope would like to posit that, much like the dress, they’re both right. BOOOOOOOOO! Hey! You can’t boo the Macalope in his own column! Can you? How did that even get in here? And why can’t the Macalope delete it? Look, AI has some great applications and can be a useful tool. It’s also sadly a business largely run by some of the worst people possible. Much like most major league sports, the game is not so much the problem as the business that’s running it. Tech exec Anil Dash recently noticed how AI seems to drive people to fits. It’s simply true that the Big AI platforms like ChatGPT are: Extremely bad for society, in many ways. Very genuinely popular with lots of people. Anil Dash via BlueSky Let’s try to unpack this a little. If you’d like to receive regular news and updates to your inbox, sign up for our newsletters, including The Macalope and Apple Breakfast, David Price’s weekly, bite-sized roundup of all the latest Apple news and rumors.Foundry AI detractors need to recognize that, despite the concerns, AI tools are providing value for many people. (Here, the Macalope is really just talking about LLMs.) “Vibe coding” may be an oversimplified marketing term, but AI coding tools make development easier. AI actually has an accessibility aspect to it that a lot of detractors don’t really want to talk about because social benefits don’t factor into their notion of AI as the knowledge equivalent of Juicero. Like it or not, AI results are faster and more convenient for average users who don’t have the time or capacity to digest large volumes of information. Meanwhile, AI fans need to understand that there are some very good reasons for people to be distrustful and resentful of AI. AI is already being used (often just as an excuse) to lay off actual human beings, often leading to dubious results at best. AI companies routinely think nothing of scraping up whatever they want without concern for copyright or the labor of others in order to train their models. While sometimes exaggerated, there are real environmental issues to shoving rainforests into stoves in order to power server farms to churn out wrong answers to the simplest of questions. If we are, as many suspect, in an AI bubble, you can bet your bottom dollar that when it pops the wealthy investors in AI will head right to the Trump administration and demand your bottom dollar as part of a bailout of their over-investment of a technology that, while useful, never should have been jammed into literally everything. You can obviously kind of see which side of this argument the Macalope leans toward. Dash is not wrong that AI tools are being used by many people every day, but there are signs that it is not nearly popular enough to support the level of investment being poured into it, as The Economist notes (subscription required). The Economist’s basic point is that no matter how much they might find AI tools convenient and useful, consumers are unlikely to shell out nearly enough for them in order for AI companies to make a return on the Dyson sphere-sized investment being made in them. Businesses must do the rest. The Economist, November 26, 2025 And many signs indicate AI use in businesses is currently falling rather than rising. Evidence is mounting that the current generation of models is not able to transform the productivity of most firms. This brings us to Apple, the company still trying to figure out this whole AI thing. On Monday, surprising literally no one, Apple announced that its VP in charge of AI development, John Giannandrea, is retiring. Giannandrea will be replaced by Amar Subramanya, who was head of engineering for Google’s Gemini Assistant prior to leaving the company for Microsoft. It remains to be seen whether or not Subramanya can turn around the giant iceberg that is Apple’s AI effort to date. The Macalope knows what he wrote. Apple’s business practices are not always the best, particularly of late. And that’s too bad. Because the company has often been better than its peers on the environment, social issues, and privacy. And what’s needed most right now is a company that’s able and willing to do AI the right way. Until that happens, don’t expect opinions about AI to change.

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This cute $50 case makes your M4 Mac mini look like a Mac Pro
Buying a Mac Pro makes absolutely no sense at the moment given that the Mac Studio is more powerful while also being substantially cheaper. But if you secretly lust after one anyway, then a cute $50 case can make an M4 Mac Mini look just like a miniature Mac Pro – with a couple of practical benefits thrown in … more…

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34 years ago, Apple created a multimedia file format for the Mac, and it’s still all around us
Macworld The late 1980s and early to mid-1990s were Apple’s weirdest and wildest era. Wedged between the triumph of the original Macintosh and the return of Steve Jobs were a sort of Wilderness Years where the company flailed all over the place, ultimately flaming out and requiring the now-famous rescue by its co-founder. To be sure, 1990s Apple was a company with a load of problems, from out-of-control research labs building unsellable products to fruitless quests for software stacks that would reinvent documents and replace Mac OS itself. But that era of calamity and excess was also the source of some real gems, including the product that debuted 34 years ago, on Dec. 2, 1991: QuickTime. Prehistory of multimedia If you’re under the age of 40, you probably don’t remember the pre-multimedia era. Computers used to be really, really bad at audio and video. I once spent half an hour downloading a file to a floppy disk so I could play the first ten seconds of “Black Dog” by Led Zeppelin through the telephone handset attached to the modem in my Apple II. It was far cry from MP3s. By the late ’80s and early ’90s, digital audio had been thoroughly integrated into Macs. (PCs needed add-on cards to do much more than issue beeps.) The next frontier was video, and even better, synchronized video and audio. There were a whole lot of challenges: the Macs of the day were not really powerful to decode and display more than a few frames per second, which was more of a slideshow than a proper video. Also, the software written to decode and encode such video (called codecs) was complex and expensive, and there were lots of different formats, making file exchange unreliable. Apple’s first promo video for QuickTime. Apple’s solution wasn’t to invent entirely new software to cover every contingency, but to build a framework for multimedia creation and playback that could use different codecs as needed. At its heart was a file that was a container for other streams of audio and video in various formats: the QuickTime Movie, or MOV. The early days were a bit of a mess, but I can tell you that I can still remember where I was when I first played a QuickTime movie (in a basement on the UC Berkeley campus, in front of a very fast Mac). The first time I plugged live video into a capture card, and it appeared, digitized, on my Mac’s screen was similarly revelatory. Keep in mind, this was unbelievably rudimentary even by the standards of the time. When Apple introduced QuickTime 2.0, it supported video at 320 by 240 pixels at 30 frames per second. That is to say, full-motion video at half the quality of the standard-definition video found on television at the time. There was a lot of work still to be done. The CD-ROM era QuickTime couldn’t have come along at a better time. Its arrival coincided with the roll-out of CD-ROM drives in Macs and PCs, which let developers fill discs with enormous video and audio files that would’ve flooded the average hard drive of the era. QuickTime (which was available for Mac and Windows alike) became a major mover in the CD-ROM world, providing accompanying video and audio for talking encyclopedias, movie databases, and games. The Star Trek: The Next Generation Interactive Technical Manual CD-ROM was a showcase for QuickTime VR.Simon & Schuster Interactive Over the years, Apple added interactive layers to QuickTime, since so much of the CD-ROM content field demanded it. And in a great burst of creativity, Apple introduced QuickTime VR, a development kit that let you build 360-degree environments from stitched-together photos. The most beloved QuickTime VR CD-ROM was probably the Star Trek: The Next Generation Interactive Technical Manual CD-ROM, which provided multiple 360-degree panoramas of various parts of the Enterprise. Today, you can set your iPhone’s camera app to Panorama mode to capture similar vistas–back then, it took dozens of photos and a Power Mac powerful enough to slowly merge them all together. Since the first days of desktop publishing, the Mac has always been a leader in the media world. QuickTime allowed Apple to push into the video side of things, most notably with the purchase of Final Cut Pro in 1998. The company even held its own QuickTime Live conference event, catering to the video industry. The rise of the internet The rise of the internet changed the game for QuickTime, of course. CD-ROMs offered relatively limited storage, but pretty decent bandwidth. You could store infinite amounts of video on the internet and add new videos all the time, but it had to come through a very, very slow data pipe in those early days. Apple built its own streaming software (the QuickTime Streaming Server) to provide different video qualities for different bandwidths, but a lot of the light and heat in the early days of internet multimedia streaming went elsewhere, to companies like RealNetworks, the makers of RealAudio. Apple did turn QuickTime into its own sort of multimedia browser, letting you click to various sites that offered videos in QuickTime format, including a very popular movie trailers library that survived for many years. QuickTime played an important role in the Mac’s support of internet video.512 Pixels Still, QuickTime remained a staple video tool for Mac users. Macs came with QuickTime Player, but you could pay to upgrade (!) to access QuickTime Pro, which let you slice and dice movie files, adding and removing audio and video tracks. For an app that purported to be a simple player utility, QuickTime Pro was actually incredibly useful on its own. Sadly, it was discontinued when Apple stopped supporting 32-bit apps with macOS Catalina. The current QuickTime Player X app that ships on every Mac uses a different set of frameworks and doesn’t support many of the codecs that had been supported by “classic” QuickTime. In many ways, the release of macOS Catalina marked the end of the road for QuickTime. Except… QuickTime’s legacy lives on. At a recent event I attended at Apple Park, Apple’s experts in immersive video for the Vision Pro pointed out that the standard format for immersive videos is, at its heart, a QuickTime container. And perhaps the most ubiquitous video container format on the internet, the MP4 file? That standard file format is actually a container format that can encompass different kinds of audio, video, and other information, all in one place. If that sounds familiar, that’s because MPEG-4 is based on the QuickTime format. Thirty-four years later, QuickTime may seem like a quaint product of a long-lost era of Apple. But the truth is, it’s become an integral part of the computing world, so pervasive that it’s almost invisible. I’d like to forget most of what happened at Apple in the early 1990s, but QuickTime definitely deserves our appreciation.

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Apple to refuse Indian government order to pre-install state security app on iPhones
The Indian government issued a mandate that intends to force smartphone companies like Apple and Samsung to preinstall a state-run security app called ‘Sanchar Saathi’ on phones sold in the region. The companies have 90 days to comply. But Reuters reports Apple intends to refuse the order and will not install the app on iPhones. The company will tell the Indian government that it does not comply with such orders in any market in which it participates, due to the associated security and privacy risks. more…

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Apple @ Work Podcast: What’s driving 1Password’s $400M ARR momentum?
Apple @ Work is exclusively brought to you by Mosyle, the only Apple Unified Platform. Mosyle is the only solution that integrates in a single professional-grade platform all the solutions necessary to seamlessly and automatically deploy, manage & protect Apple devices at work. Over 45,000 organizations trust Mosyle to make millions of Apple devices work-ready with no effort and at an affordable cost. Request your EXTENDED TRIAL today and understand why Mosyle is everything you need to work with Apple. In this episode of Apple @ Work, 1Password CEO David Faugno joins the show to discuss the company’s growth to $400M ARR, agentic browsers, and more. more…

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Samsung’s first tri-fold phone unfolds into a 10-inch tablet
The Galaxy Z TriFold marks Samsung’s leap past standard foldables, offering a tri-fold form factor that opens into a tablet-sized display. (via Cult of Mac - Your source for the latest Apple news, rumors, analysis, reviews, how-tos and deals.)

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Rumor: Apple may use Intel to help produce lower-end M7 chips in the United States beginning in 2027
After years of strife, Intel could see its chip foundries once again making Apple chips as soon as 2027. Per AppleInsider and industry analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, the lower-end M7 Apple Silicon chip could be produced in the United States come 2027. Until now, all M-series chips used in Macs and iPads have been built by […] Source

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Apple adds original iPhone SE model to obsolete products list
You may love the original iPhone SE, but it can’t be listed as a current piece of hardware, and thereby supported, forever. Apple on Monday added the first-generation iPhone SE to its obsolete products list. With this change, the handset is no longer eligible for repairs, battery replacements, or any other service at Apple Stores […] Source

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10 simple steps to speed up your iPhone
Macworld Have you ever wondered if your iPhone is getting slower, or if it’s just your imagination? Have you ever wished there was some way to speed it up? If the answer to either question is yes, then you’re not alone. iPhones absolutely do get slower with age. The issue is often caused by a lot of junk files and not enough free space, as well as outdated software and unnecessary processes running in the background. So before splashing out on an expensive new device, it’s worth doing your best to solve those issues. Can you make your iPhone run faster? Yes. Whatever has made your phone slow down, there’s a solution. And in this article we show how to get it back up to speed. Step 1: Update iOS At time of writing Apple’s current operating system for the iPhone is iOS 26. From time to time there will be small ‘point’ updates (iOS 26.0.1, iOS 26.1 and so on) while the next major new version (iOS 27) will be here in September 2026. If you haven’t got the latest version of iOS, whatever that is when you read this, you may want to update. You can check by opening the Settings app on your iPhone and going to General > Software Update. This screen will let you know if there’s an update waiting for you to install, and guide you through the process of installing it. For more details, check out our complete guide to updating iOS. Updating to the latest version of iOS will often fix issues with your iPhone, because it will give you access to the latest patches and fixes for known problems. It’s almost always a good idea to install the latest point update for this reason. If you’re on iOS 26.1 and iOS 26.1.1 becomes available, grab it. It might make your iPhone a little faster, and it’s extremely unlikely to make it any slower. Larger updates (iOS 27, iOS 28, and so on) are a more complicated case. They don’t just add patches; they also add visual tweaks and new features, all of which are designed for the latest hardware and can be overwhelming for older models. They may also take up more space on your device, which is a whole other problem we discuss later in this article. Apple is supposed to address this by only allowing iPhones which are capable of handling an update to install it: you’ll find the list of supported devices for each version of iOS in this article. The ultra-cautious approach would be to only install a yearly update if your iPhone is comfortably inside the compatible zone. iOS 26, for instance, is supported by the iPhone 11 and later, but that doesn’t mean the iPhone 11 will deliver optimal performance. The safe bet would be to stay on the previous version (iOS 18; there was a change to the numbering system!) unless you’ve got an iPhone 12 or later. iOS 26 looks amazing, but it may be too demanding for older iPhones.Foundry Step 2: Restart your iPhone A common first piece of advice is to close down unused apps–and if it comforts you to do so, swipe up from the bottom of the screen (or double-press the Home button, if you’re using an older device that still has one) and swipe upwards on non-essential apps to close them. But this strategy has long been debunked, by Daring Fireball, Apple itself, and many others. Instead, let’s restart the iPhone completely. Press volume up, then volume down, then press and hold the power button on the righthand side. (If there are two buttons on the right of your iPhone, press the upper one. The lower one will be Camera Control.) You’ll then see the Power Off slider; swipe across this to restart your iPhone. (Again, if you’ve got an older model with a Home button, the method is a little different. You simply have to press and hold the power button on the top or righthand edge until the Power Off slider appears.) Once your iPhone has finished shutting down, which will take 10 seconds or so, start it up again by pressing and holding the power/sleep button for about 5 seconds. You’ll see the Apple icon, then the iPhone will restart. You shouldn’t have to do this very often, but when you do it’ll clear out the memory and can often fix unruly apps. The occasional power cycle helps keep iOS ticking over. Step 3: Kill automatic background processes The next step is to turn on Low Data Mode. This means apps won’t use data in the background, there won’t be any automatic app downloads, and emails won’t be automatically retrieved. As well as saving you data, this can also speed up your iPhone and improve battery life. To turn on Low Data Mode, open the Settings app and select Cellular > Cellular Data Options and tap the toggle labeled Low Data Mode. (You may also have to tap Data Mode before you get to the toggle, depending on your data plan. And readers in the U.K. will instead follow the Settings path Mobile Service > Mobile Data Options > [Data Mode] > Low Data Mode.) You can also turn off these data-hogging processes in Wi-Fi. Open Settings and select Wi-Fi. Tap the i next to the network you wish to limit, and choose Low Data Mode. Step 4: Turn down the graphics Dialling down the fancy visual effects can help to improve performance. Start by turning off Motion. Open Settings and go to Accessibility > Motion and tap the toggle next to Reduce Motion. This turns off the parallax effect on icons. Some people have complained that this effect makes them feel seasick, so you might even find the phone easier to use in this setting (although it will probably take some time to get used to). And of course, it will also use less power. iOS feels different with Reduce Motion enabled, but it may be worth it. David Price / Foundry Next you can reduce the see-through background effects which can also slow things down. In Settings, select Accessibility > Display & Text Size and then turn on Reduce Transparency. Similarly, if you’re running iOS 26 or later, you may want to tone down Liquid Glass, whose visual effects can make the interface confusing as well as increasing the drain on your phone’s processor and memory. Open Settings and go to Display & Brightness > Liquid Glass and change the toggle from Clear to Tinted. Keep an eye on this page; more Liquid Glass toggles may appear here in the future. Step 5: Clear cookies and data in Safari Next you should try emptying Safari’s cookies and data to free up some memory. Open the Settings app and select Apps, then use the alphabetic selector to find Safari. Scroll down to the section headed History and Website Data, then tap Clear History and Website Data. iOS will ask how much history you’d like to delete; the most effective option is All history. Bear in mind that this action may make browsing the web slightly less convenient for a while. Safari will forget the URLs you’ve been visiting so won’t suggest them as you type, unless they’re bookmarked (although it will start remembering new ones from now on). And clearing data may mean some websites forget your preferences. Step 6: Free up space on your iPhone If you’re running out of space on your iPhone, this could account for the sluggishness. Your device will tend to run better if it has at least 10GB free, or around 10% of the available storage. To find out just how much storage you’re wasting, open the Settings app and go to General > iPhone Storage. You’ll see how much space is left on your iPhone and what apps and files are using the most. There are various ways to free up space, such as deleting photos and music, or offloading data to iCloud. But we’ll start with deleting apps. Delete unwanted apps Identify apps worth deleting by going to the iPhone Storage page mentioned above; by default your apps will be listed in order of the space they take up, although you can tap the dropdown menu to filter them by name or date last used instead. Hunt out apps that are big, or you don’t use very often, or both. And remember that once you own an app you can download it again for free at a later date. Once you’ve decided what needs to go, tap on the app in the list, then choose Offload App (if you want to hang on to any documents and data) or Delete App (if you just want to get rid of it). You can also delete apps from your Home Screen by pressing and holding the app icon and selecting Remove App, but it’s probably simpler to do it from Settings. David Price / Foundry iOS will also offer specific recommendations. In the screenshot above, for example, you can see the option to save 26.86GB by deleting photos and videos, or 83.4GB by offloading unused apps. Delete messages Messages can take up a considerable amount of space, especially if you send and receive a lot of images. One option is to sync Messages to iCloud. Open Settings and tap on your Apple ID at the top, then select iCloud > Messages, and tap the slider next to Use on this iPhone so it turns green. With this setting turned on your Messages will be stored in iCloud rather than on your phone. You’ll need to pay for iCloud storage to reap the benefits of this option. If you don’t want to pay to store your Messages in iCloud, you can delete them from your iPhone quite easily. Start by opening Messages and scrolling down to find any message threads that you can manage without. Swipe to the left and tap the red trashcan icon, then hit Delete (or Delete and Block/Delete and Report Spam if either is relevant). Or, if you swipe all the way left until the trashcan icon expands, you can do this with fewer taps. Pro tip! David Price / Foundry Deleting threads with only text-based messages won’t free up much space, so it’s worth concentrating on those that include images, videos and voice notes. If you have a friend who sends you a lot of pictures, but you don’t want to delete the whole conversation, there’s an easy way to quickly and selectively delete a few images. Open their message, tap their name at the top of the screen, then select Photos. You’ll see all the images exchanged between you in a convenient list. You can then either press and hold on individual images and hit Delete, or select Edit at the top right, followed by Select Photos. Tap the photos you don’t want, then hit the trashcan icon at the bottom right. Finally, if you’re sent a lot of audio messages, make sure iOS knows to delete them after you’ve listened to them. Open the Settings app, navigate to Apps > Messages, scroll down to the section headed Audio Messages, and tap Expire. Check this is set to After 2 Minutes rather than Never. That’s two minutes after they’re opened, not after they’re sent, so don’t worry about rushing to listen before they vanish forever. Delete music These days many of us stream music using a service such as Spotify or Apple Music. (Apple Music costs $10.99/£10.99 a month, and gives you access to a library of more than 100 million songs wherever you have internet access.) But if you’ve got a lot of tracks stored on your phone, whether they’re temporarily borrowed from a streaming service or sourced from elsewhere, that could be contributing to a lack of free space, and therefore a lack of speed. Open the Settings app and go to Apps > Music, swipe down to the section headed Downloads and tap Downloaded Music. You’ll see all your tunes arranged by artist, together with the number of albums and the storage allocation taken up by each. To delete an entire artist’s worth of music, swipe left across their name and hit Delete; or tap their name to go in and delete individual albums or tracks. Delete photos Again, the temptation is to throw money at the problem. The simplest way to free up space on your phone is to pay for a decent chunk of iCloud storage and turn on the iCloud Photos feature: open Settings and go to Apps > Photos and tap the toggle labelled iCloud Photos. This means all the photos from all your Apple devices will be stored together in the cloud, and you’ll be able to see thumbnails on all your devices. The full-res version won’t be stored on your iPhone, unless you choose to download it, which means you’ll save lots of space. However, if you don’t want to pay, you could back up your photos on your Mac and then delete them from your iPhone. The easiest way to do this is to plug your iPhone into your Mac, open Photos, and then import your iPhone photos. To delete photos on the phone, open the Photos app, hit Select and then tap on the images you want to delete. Then tap the trashcan icon and confirm. If you want to enjoy the extra space right away, you’ll need to go to the Recently Deleted folder (go to Collections, scroll down to the section headed Utilities, then tap Recently Deleted) to actually delete the images, as Apple will otherwise keep them on your phone for 30 days just in case you change your mind. Here’s one last tip: if you take a lot of screenshots on your iPhone, find the screenshots album (you’ll find it under Collections > Media Types) and delete them there. Screenshots are unlikely to be wanted in the long term. It’s also worth targeting any Burst photos you’ve taken: you may have ended up with 14 pictures because you kept the shutter pressed too long. Delete these for easy space gains. Step 7: Check for throttling Back in 2017, Apple added a controversial iOS function to automatically throttle the performance of iPhones with ageing batteries in order to prolong their life and “prevent the device from unexpectedly shutting down.” The company later made it possible to turn this off, and if your phone is slow (and particularly if it’s on the older side) it’s worth checking to see if this is an option. Just bear in mind that any speed increases may come at the cost of reliability. If you’re running iOS 18 or earlier, open the Settings app and go to Battery > Battery Health & Charging and look for a reference to performance. If it says Peak Performance Capability, everything is running normally. If it says Below Peak Performance, throttling is being applied to slow down your phone: tap the Disable button to turn this off. Those on iOS 26 or later will see different options because the function was changed and rebranded as Adaptive Power. Open Settings and go to Battery > Power Mode. Tap the toggle labelled Adaptive Power so it turns gray. This should ensure any system throttling is switched off. Adaptive Power may slow down performance slightly.David Price / Foundry Again, bear in mind that these functions are supposed to be there for your protection. A better solution would therefore be to ensure your battery is in optimal health so throttling isn’t necessary; that way you’ll get both performance and reliability. We have a separate article that shows you how to check your iPhone battery and find out if it needs to be replaced. Step 8: Restore to factory settings We’re getting into drastic solutions now. We’re going to perform a full restore, which deletes all the data on the iPhone and returns it, in effect, to the state it was in when you bought it. (Except that the hardware components will still have suffered a number of years of wear and tear, of course.) Since we’re deleting all the data, you should back up the iPhone first. Then you can restore the iPhone to its factory settings by opening Settings and going to General > Transfer or Reset iPhone > Erase All Content and Settings. You’ll then have to enter your passcode and confirm. After a few minutes, you’ll be presented with the welcome screen you saw when you first started up the iPhone. You can now restore from the backup you made and see if the speed problems have gone away. If they persist, it’s possible the issue was caused by something on you phone that you’ve now reintroduced, so as a last resort try erasing everything once more and this time set up from scratch, rather than using the backup. Step 9: Ask Apple for help If none of the above techniques work, you can ask Apple for help. Just bear in mind that there may not be an easy (or cheap) solution. As we mentioned earlier, slowness can be a matter of perception. But if you’re sure something’s up, and you’ve tried all our tricks, you may wish to ask Apple to check for a faulty component or other hardware issue. (This may be covered by your Apple warranty if you’ve got one.) Read our article on booking an appointment with Apple for the details. Step 10: Buy a new iPhone If Apple can’t help, or the company’s help is too expensive to be worth it, we reach the final option: give up on your older iPhone and buy something new(er). If you’ve reached that point, check out our iPhone buying guide to help figure out the right model for you. Then read about the best iPhone deals to make sure you’re paying the lowest price. Or, if you’re determined to buy direct from Apple, jump straight to the Apple store and pick a replacement.

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10 simple steps to speed up your iPhone
Macworld Have you ever wondered if your iPhone is getting slower, or if it’s just your imagination? Have you ever wished there was some way to speed it up? If the answer to either question is yes, then you’re not alone. iPhones absolutely do get slower with age. The issue is often caused by a lot of junk files and not enough free space, as well as outdated software and unnecessary processes running in the background. So before splashing out on an expensive new device, it’s worth doing your best to solve those issues. Can you make your iPhone run faster? Yes. Whatever has made your phone slow down, there’s a solution. And in this article we show how to get it back up to speed. Step 1: Update iOS At time of writing Apple’s current operating system for the iPhone is iOS 26. From time to time there will be small ‘point’ updates (iOS 26.0.1, iOS 26.1 and so on) while the next major new version (iOS 27) will be here in September 2026. If you haven’t got the latest version of iOS, whatever that is when you read this, you may want to update. You can check by opening the Settings app on your iPhone and going to General > Software Update. This screen will let you know if there’s an update waiting for you to install, and guide you through the process of installing it. For more details, check out our complete guide to updating iOS. You may find you can’t run the latest version of iOS, but at least install the latest version of iOS for your iPhone. Updating to the latest version of iOS will often fix issues with your iPhone, because it will give you access to the latest patches and fixes for known problems. It’s almost always a good idea to install the latest point update for this reason. If you’re on iOS 26.1 and iOS 26.1.1 becomes available, grab it. It might make your iPhone a little faster, and it’s extremely unlikely to make it any slower. Larger updates (iOS 27, iOS 28, and so on) are a more complicated case. They don’t just add patches; they also add visual tweaks and new features, all of which are designed for the latest hardware and can be overwhelming for older models. They may also take up more space on your device, which is a whole other problem we discuss later in this article. You can also experience slow downs for the first few days after a larger update because Spotlight reindexes your iPhone, so if that matches your experience right now, that’s probably the reason. Apple is supposed to address this by only allowing iPhones which are capable of handling an update to install it: you’ll find the list of supported devices for each version of iOS in our iOS compatibility checker. The ultra-cautious approach would be to only install a yearly update if your iPhone is comfortably inside the compatible zone. iOS 26, for instance, is supported by the iPhone 11 and later, but that doesn’t mean the iPhone 11 will deliver optimal performance. The safe bet would be to stay on the previous version (iOS 18; there was a change to the numbering system!) unless you’ve got an iPhone 12 or later. iOS 26 looks amazing, but it may be too demanding for older iPhones.Foundry Step 2: Restart your iPhone A common first piece of advice is to close down unused apps–and if it comforts you to do so, swipe up from the bottom of the screen (or double-press the Home button, if you’re using an older device that still has one) and swipe upwards on non-essential apps to close them. But this strategy has long been debunked, by Daring Fireball, Apple itself, and many others. Instead, let’s restart the iPhone completely. Press volume up, then volume down, then press and hold the power button on the righthand side. (If there are two buttons on the right of your iPhone, press the upper one. The lower one will be Camera Control.) You’ll then see the Power Off slider; swipe across this to restart your iPhone. (Again, if you’ve got an older model with a Home button, the method is a little different. You simply have to press and hold the power button on the top or righthand edge until the Power Off slider appears.) Once your iPhone has finished shutting down, which will take 10 seconds or so, start it up again by pressing and holding the power/sleep button for about 5 seconds. You’ll see the Apple icon, then the iPhone will restart. You shouldn’t have to do this very often, but when you do it’ll clear out the memory and can often fix unruly apps. The occasional power cycle helps keep iOS ticking over. Step 3: Kill automatic background processes The next step is to turn on Low Data Mode. This means apps won’t use data in the background, there won’t be any automatic app downloads, and emails won’t be automatically retrieved. As well as saving you data, this can also speed up your iPhone and improve battery life. To turn on Low Data Mode, open the Settings app and select Cellular > Cellular Data Options and tap the toggle labeled Low Data Mode. (You may also have to tap Data Mode before you get to the toggle, depending on your data plan. And readers in the U.K. will instead follow the Settings path Mobile Service > Mobile Data Options > [Data Mode] > Low Data Mode.) You can also turn off these data-hogging processes in Wi-Fi. Open Settings and select Wi-Fi. Tap the i next to the network you wish to limit, and choose Low Data Mode. Step 4: Turn down the graphics and visual effects Dialling down the fancy visual effects can help to improve performance. Start by turning off Motion. Open Settings and go to Accessibility > Motion and tap the toggle next to Reduce Motion. This turns off the parallax effect on icons. Some people have complained that this effect makes them feel seasick, so you might even find the phone easier to use in this setting (although it will probably take some time to get used to). And of course, it will also use less power. iOS feels different with Reduce Motion enabled, but it may be worth it. David Price / Foundry Next you can reduce the see-through background effects which can also slow things down. In Settings, select Accessibility > Display & Text Size and then turn on Reduce Transparency. Similarly, if you’re running iOS 26 or later, you may want to tone down Liquid Glass, whose visual effects can make the interface confusing as well as increasing the drain on your phone’s processor and memory. Open Settings and go to Display & Brightness > Liquid Glass and change the toggle from Clear to Tinted. Keep an eye on this page; more Liquid Glass toggles may appear here in the future. Step 5: Clear cookies and data in Safari Next you should try emptying Safari’s cookies and data to free up some memory. Open the Settings app and select Apps, then use the alphabetic selector to find Safari. Scroll down to the section headed History and Website Data, then tap Clear History and Website Data. iOS will ask how much history you’d like to delete; the most effective option is All history. Bear in mind that this action may make browsing the web slightly less convenient for a while. Safari will forget the URLs you’ve been visiting so won’t suggest them as you type, unless they’re bookmarked (although it will start remembering new ones from now on). And clearing data may mean some websites forget your preferences. Step 6: Free up space on your iPhone If you’re running out of space on your iPhone, this could account for the sluggishness. Your device will tend to run better if it has at least 10GB free, or around 10% of the available storage. To find out just how much storage you’re wasting, open the Settings app and go to General > iPhone Storage. You’ll see how much space is left on your iPhone and what apps and files are using the most. There are various ways to free up space, such as deleting photos and music, or offloading data to iCloud. But we’ll start with deleting apps. Delete unwanted apps Identify apps worth deleting by going to the iPhone Storage page mentioned above; by default your apps will be listed in order of the space they take up, although you can tap the dropdown menu to filter them by name or date last used instead. Hunt out apps that are big, or you don’t use very often, or both. And remember that once you own an app you can download it again for free at a later date. Once you’ve decided what needs to go, tap on the app in the list, then choose Offload App (if you want to hang on to any documents and data) or Delete App (if you just want to get rid of it). You can also delete apps from your Home Screen by pressing and holding the app icon and selecting Remove App, but it’s probably simpler to do it from Settings. David Price / Foundry iOS will also offer specific recommendations. In the screenshot above, for example, you can see the option to save 26.86GB by deleting photos and videos, or 83.4GB by offloading unused apps. Delete messages Messages can take up a considerable amount of space, especially if you send and receive a lot of images. One option is to sync Messages to iCloud. Open Settings and tap on your Apple ID at the top, then select iCloud > Messages, and tap the slider next to Use on this iPhone so it turns green. With this setting turned on your Messages will be stored in iCloud rather than on your phone. You’ll need to pay for iCloud storage to reap the benefits of this option. If you don’t want to pay to store your Messages in iCloud, you can delete them from your iPhone quite easily. Start by opening Messages and scrolling down to find any message threads that you can manage without. Swipe to the left and tap the red trashcan icon, then hit Delete (or Delete and Block/Delete and Report Spam if either is relevant). Or, if you swipe all the way left until the trashcan icon expands, you can do this with fewer taps. Pro tip! David Price / Foundry Deleting threads with only text-based messages won’t free up much space, so it’s worth concentrating on those that include images, videos and voice notes. If you have a friend who sends you a lot of pictures, but you don’t want to delete the whole conversation, there’s an easy way to quickly and selectively delete a few images. Open their message, tap their name at the top of the screen, then select Photos. You’ll see all the images exchanged between you in a convenient list. You can then either press and hold on individual images and hit Delete, or select Edit at the top right, followed by Select Photos. Tap the photos you don’t want, then hit the trashcan icon at the bottom right. Finally, if you’re sent a lot of audio messages, make sure iOS knows to delete them after you’ve listened to them. Open the Settings app, navigate to Apps > Messages, scroll down to the section headed Audio Messages, and tap Expire. Check this is set to After 2 Minutes rather than Never. That’s two minutes after they’re opened, not after they’re sent, so don’t worry about rushing to listen before they vanish forever. Delete music These days many of us stream music using a service such as Spotify or Apple Music. (Apple Music costs $10.99/£10.99 a month, and gives you access to a library of more than 100 million songs wherever you have internet access.) But if you’ve got a lot of tracks stored on your phone, whether they’re temporarily borrowed from a streaming service or sourced from elsewhere, that could be contributing to a lack of free space, and therefore a lack of speed. Open the Settings app and go to Apps > Music, swipe down to the section headed Downloads and tap Downloaded Music. You’ll see all your tunes arranged by artist, together with the number of albums and the storage allocation taken up by each. To delete an entire artist’s worth of music, swipe left across their name and hit Delete; or tap their name to go in and delete individual albums or tracks. Delete photos Again, the temptation is to throw money at the problem. The simplest way to free up space on your phone is to pay for a decent chunk of iCloud storage and turn on the iCloud Photos feature: open Settings and go to Apps > Photos and tap the toggle labelled iCloud Photos. This means all the photos from all your Apple devices will be stored together in the cloud, and you’ll be able to see thumbnails on all your devices. The full-res version won’t be stored on your iPhone, unless you choose to download it, which means you’ll save lots of space. The size of your photo library on your iPhone will be significantly smaller if you store the high res images in the cloud, but expect that it will still take up a lot of space on your device if you have a lot of photos. If you want to reduce the space given to your photos you will still need to delete some. However, if you don’t want to pay to store your photos in iCloud, you could back up your photos on your Mac and then delete them from your iPhone. The easiest way to do this is to plug your iPhone into your Mac, open Photos, and then import your iPhone photos. To delete photos on the phone, open the Photos app, hit Select and then tap on the images you want to delete. Then tap the trashcan icon and confirm. If you want to enjoy the extra space right away, you’ll need to go to the Recently Deleted folder (go to Collections, scroll down to the section headed Utilities, then tap Recently Deleted) to actually delete the images, as Apple will otherwise keep them on your phone for 30 days just in case you change your mind. Here’s one last tip: if you take a lot of screenshots on your iPhone, find the screenshots album (you’ll find it under Collections > Media Types) and delete them there. Screenshots are unlikely to be wanted in the long term. It’s also worth targeting any Burst photos you’ve taken: you may have ended up with 14 pictures because you kept the shutter pressed too long. Delete these for easy space gains. Video also takes up a lot of space, so look at your album of videos and delete those you don’t want. Step 7: Check for throttling Back in 2017, Apple added a controversial iOS function to automatically throttle the performance of iPhones with ageing batteries in order to prolong their life and “prevent the device from unexpectedly shutting down.” The company later made it possible to turn this off, and if your phone is slow (and particularly if it’s on the older side) it’s worth checking to see if this is an option. Just bear in mind that any speed increases may come at the cost of reliability. If you’re running iOS 18 or earlier, open the Settings app and go to Battery > Battery Health & Charging and look for a reference to performance. If it says Peak Performance Capability, everything is running normally. If it says Below Peak Performance, throttling is being applied to slow down your phone: tap the Disable button to turn this off. Those on iOS 26 or later will see different options because the function was changed and rebranded as Adaptive Power. Open Settings and go to Battery > Power Mode. Tap the toggle labelled Adaptive Power so it turns gray. This should ensure any system throttling is switched off. Adaptive Power may slow down performance slightly.David Price / Foundry Again, bear in mind that these functions are supposed to be there for your protection. A better solution would therefore be to ensure your battery is in optimal health so throttling isn’t necessary; that way you’ll get both performance and reliability. We have a separate article that shows you how to check your iPhone battery and find out if it needs to be replaced. Step 8: Restore to factory settings We’re getting into drastic solutions now. We’re going to perform a full restore, which deletes all the data on the iPhone and returns it, in effect, to the state it was in when you bought it. (Except that the hardware components will still have suffered a number of years of wear and tear, of course.) Since we’re deleting all the data, you should back up the iPhone first. Then you can restore the iPhone to its factory settings by opening Settings and going to General > Transfer or Reset iPhone > Erase All Content and Settings. You’ll then have to enter your passcode and confirm. After a few minutes, you’ll be presented with the welcome screen you saw when you first started up the iPhone. You can now restore from the backup you made and see if the speed problems have gone away. If they persist, it’s possible the issue was caused by something on you phone that you’ve now reintroduced, so as a last resort try erasing everything once more and this time set up from scratch, rather than using the backup. Step 9: Ask Apple for help If none of the above techniques work, you can ask Apple for help. Just bear in mind that there may not be an easy (or cheap) solution. As we mentioned earlier, slowness can be a matter of perception. But if you’re sure something’s up, and you’ve tried all our tricks, you may wish to ask Apple to check for a faulty component or other hardware issue. (This may be covered by your Apple warranty if you’ve got one.) Read our article on booking an appointment with Apple for the details. Step 10: Buy a new iPhone If Apple can’t help, or the company’s help is too expensive to be worth it, we reach the final option: give up on your older iPhone and buy something new(er). If you’ve reached that point, check out our iPhone buying guide to help figure out the best iPhone for you. Then read about the best iPhone deals to make sure you’re paying the lowest price.

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For stargazers, birders & curious humans—a smartphone-based telescope for 49% off
Macworld TL;DR: The Viztalab smartphone telescope turns your smartphone into a high-precision viewing tool for crystal-clear stargazing and birdwatching—no PhD required—for just $199.99 (MSRP $399). Stargazing, birdwatching, and wildlife spotting just got a whole lot smarter. The Viztalab Smartphone-Based AI Telescope brings next-level clarity and intelligent guidance straight to your phone, all for $199.99 while this limited-time offer lasts. Whether you’re scanning the skies or tracking rare birds, this gadget makes discovery feel easy and incredibly cool. Powered by advanced ED lenses and AI technology, Viztalab delivers 24x true optical zoom with zero quality loss, ensuring every view is sharp, vibrant, and glare-free. The real magic? The Vizta App. It identifies over 10,000 bird species, offers an interactive sky map, and guides you to constellations, planets, and celestial events with simple, tap-to-follow instructions. Designed for both beginners and seasoned explorers, this telescope stacks multiple exposures to reveal jaw-dropping detail and stores your best shots safely in the cloud. Setup is refreshingly simple — attach your phone and launch the app. From spontaneous backyard stargazing sessions to planned wildlife adventures, Viztalab turns curiosity into crystal-clear knowledge. It’s smart, portable, and ready for wherever your sense of wonder takes you. Get the Viztalab Smartphone-Based AI Telescope while it’s just $199.99 during this holiday sale. Viztalab Smartphone-Based AI TelescopeSee Deal StackSocial prices subject to change.

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Apple AI chief John Giannandrea is stepping down
Macworld Apple has formally announced that John Giannandrea, its Senior VP of Machine Learning and AI, is stepping down from his position. He will serve as an advisor to the company before retiring in the spring of 2026. Giannandrea will not be directly replaced by a Senior VP role, but by a Vice President: Amar Subramanya. Subramanya was at Google for 16 years and made a name for himself as a prominent AI researcher. Just this summer, he joined Microsoft as Corporate VP of AI. Now, after just six months, he’s joining Apple. Subramanya was a principal member of the team that created Gemini (released in 2023) and Imagen 3 at Google. In other words, after OpenAI caught the industry off guard with ChatGPT, he appears to have been instrumental in helping Google catch up. Now, he’s at Apple, where the same work is desperately needed. Subramanya will report to Senior VP of Software Engineering Craig Frederighi. He will be responsible for leading Apple’s efforts in Apple Foundation Models, ML research, and AI Safety and Evaluation. Most of those who worked under Giannandrea’s group will now report to Eddy Cue, the Senior VP of Services. Giannandrea was brought into Apple from Google back in 2018, when Apple’s biggest AI effort was the ill-fated Apple Car project. He and his team have been responsible for many of the advancements Apple has made in the field of AI and ML, but he is perhaps also to blame for Siri–Apple’s most visible and important AI product–falling far behind the state of the art. Apple’s press release reads as though Giannandrea will step back from his role right away, staying on to advise during the transition, and will fully retire in the spring of 2026, which is when we expect Apple’s next-gen Siri to be released. That gives Apple several months to get this new AI organization in place and its leadership running well by the time it introduces the new Siri to over a billion users.

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Apple replaces AI chief, taps ex-Googler to fix Apple Intelligence
Apple's AI chief is out after a string of failures. Learn about the new leadership for the company's critical AI development efforts. (via Cult of Mac - Your source for the latest Apple news, rumors, analysis, reviews, how-tos and deals.)

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Here are the main challenges that Apple’s new AI lead will face from day one
Amar Subramanya will likely become one of the most closely watched hires Apple has made in years. Here’s what he needs to do first. more…

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Apple AI Chief Retiring After Siri Failure
Apple's longtime AI chief John Giannandrea is retiring, with former Microsoft and Google AI leader Amar Subramanya stepping in to take over. MacRumors notes the retirement comes after the company's repeated delays in delivering its revamped Siri and internal turmoil that led to an AI team exodus. From the report: Giannandrea will serve as an advisor between now and 2026, with former Microsoft AI researcher Amar Subramanya set to take over as vice president of AI. Subramanya will report to Apple engineering chief Craig Federighi, and will lead Apple Foundation Models, ML research, and AI Safety and Evaluation. Subramanya was previously corporate vice president of AI at Microsoft, and before that, he spent 16 years at Google. He was head of engineering for Google's Gemini Assistant, and Apple says that he has "deep expertise" in both AI and ML research that will be important to "Apple's ongoing innovation and future Apple Intelligence features." Some of the teams that Giannandrea oversaw will move to Sabih Khan and Eddy Cue, such as AI Infrastructure and Search and Knowledge. Khan is Apple's new Chief Operating Officer who took over for Jeff Williams earlier this year. Cue has long overseen Apple services. [...] Apple said that it is "poised to accelerate its work in delivering intelligent, trusted, and profoundly personal experiences" with the new AI team. "We are thankful for the role John played in building and advancing our AI work, helping Apple continue to innovate and enrich the lives of our users," said Apple CEO Tim Cook in a statement. "AI has long been central to Apple's strategy, and we are pleased to welcome Amar to Craig's leadership team and to bring his extraordinary AI expertise to Apple. In addition to growing his leadership team and AI responsibilities with Amar's joining, Craig has been instrumental in driving our AI efforts, including overseeing our work to bring a more personalized Siri to users next year." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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