The Morning After: Apple’s Quest To Make AI Useful To Its Users

In the run up to Apple’s big developer shindig, the rumor mill suggested we’d not see too many big new features. Instead, this year’s focus was on tidying up what went before, trimming bloat and making code more efficient. The new operating systems are designed to run faster and more efficiently, giving a new lease of life to older hardware. It’s a laudable choice, and you can catch up with everything the company announced in our round up.

At the same time, Devindra Hardawar praises Apple’s refusal to get sucked into the hype around Agentic AI. He singled out the company’s focus on building specific features that are actually useful and, even better, private. Even if the thought of your Passwords app keeping an eye on your logins and automatically changing them if they’re found in a breach gives him pause. After all, the risk that one overly helpful line of code locks us out of our bank accounts is enough to give you a cold sweat.

— Dan Cooper

Trump Mobile T1 is the first smartphone from a new startup with an eye on taking the mobile world by storm. But the company may find itself in hot water after burnishing its “made in the USA” bona fides. Our friends at iFixit took the handset apart to find it’s carrying many of the same components as a Phillippines-made HTC U24 Pro. We’re sure regulators and lawmakers will be giving whoever put their name on this phone plenty of scrutiny.

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Honor’s Magic V6 is the company’s latest folding phone, and if we were reviewing a device on its hardware alone, it’d score top marks. Sadly, we’re also judging the quality of its software and it’s on that front that it falls down, certainly compared to its rivals. The company needs to go back and give its operating system a polish until all of its more obvious flaws are gone.

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Friends, I regret to inform you that Ted Cruz is At It Again. He’s teamed up with Ron Wyden to introduce a bipartisan bill holding the government accountable for first amendment violations. In the unlikely event it becomes law, the JAWBONE act would give Americans a cause of action to sue the government if they feel they have been censored. Of course, Cruz thinks that includes people who were somehow “canceled” by big tech after speaking out against vaccine mandates. Wyden, on the other hand, wonders if maybe the real issue is whoever is using the FCC and FTC to dictate what major media companies can and cannot do.

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