Marcus Mendes

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney says Apple is keeping Fortnite’s return to the App Store in limbo, having “neither accepted nor rejected” the latest submission for review.

The ongoing silence now threatens to delay Fortnite’s next major update, planned for this Friday.

Going on 20 years now, Kantar has released its BrandZ Most Valuable Global Brands report, which combines financial data with consumer perception metrics to find the world’s 100 most valuable brands.

In a year in which the total value of the Top 100 reached an all-time high of $10.7 trillion (a 29% jump from last year), Apple has once again led the pack.

After a tough period of laying staff down and hiking prices up following its acquisition by Bending Spoons, Evernote has finally been getting some cool features.

Recently, the platform got multimodal AI transcription support, and it’s actually pretty good.

As I mentioned recently, SmartGym has become one of my favorite apps.

Anyone who uses it as a workout companion can easily see why it was named Apple Watch App of the Year in 2023, chosen as a finalist for the Apple Design Awards, and recently featured by Apple as one of the best apps optimized for iOS 18.

Now, the app just got even better, with its biggest update yet.

Considering the host of AI features Apple promised at last year’s WWDC, here we are one year later, and the company seems even further behind the competition than it did last June.

To call the Apple Intelligence rollout a blunder is quite an understatement. However, I am hopeful that in a few weeks, we might see a few new features (or maybe concepts of a plan) that may actually make it feel like the company might catch up:

When Netflix introduced its ad-supported tier in late 2022, it wasn’t exactly a surprise. Other mainstream streaming services had been widely adopting the strategy, much to viewers’ protests.

Now, Netflix has shared some data that indicates that while many might object to an ad-supported tier, they’re watching it anyway.

According to new data from Appfigures (via Bloomberg,) mobile game spending hit new highs in 2024, even though downloads and new game releases saw a steep decline.

Starting today, Apple Maps users in the U.S. will be able to search for and view restaurants and hotels with MICHELIN Guide distinctions, including MICHELIN Stars, Green Stars, Bib Gourmand restaurants, and Key-rated hotels.

Apple is also bringing curated content and rankings from The Infatuation and Golf Digest to Maps “soon,” with more sources planned for the future.

Today, Brazilian antitrust regulator CADE voted unanimously to maintain a provisional measure issued last week requiring Apple to loosen restrictions on how iOS developers offer services and handle payments in their apps.

The measure stems from an investigation launched in 2022 following a complaint by Latin American e-commerce giant Mercado Libre.

In early 2023, Spotify launched DJ, an interesting feature that leveraged a text-to-speech LLM to deliver… traditional radio, pretty much.

Now, Spotify has announced that, much like traditional radio, DJ can also take requests.

Last week, Israeli firm NSO Group, best known for its Pegasus spyware targeting iPhones and Android devices, was ordered to pay Meta more than $167M for targeting WhatsApp users.

Now, TechCrunch has published an interesting report based on the 1,000+ page transcript of the trial.

Today, TikTok announced AI Alive, an AI filter that will allow users to animate static photos through prompts. ByteDance says that this new image-to-video feature undergoes multiple checks to avoid misuse, and its output will be labeled as AI-generated.

Here’s how to use it.

Since the DMA took effect in Europe, Apple has been forced to loosen its grip by allowing third-party access to its platforms, devices, and operating systems.

One key example is the iPhone’s NFC chip, which was once locked to Apple Pay but is now required to support third-party payment providers. It took longer than one would have guessed, but now PayPal is taking advantage of this wider access.

Apple’s Machine Learning team, in collaboration with researchers from Nanjing University and The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, has announced an interesting 3D AI model called Matrix3D.

This so-called Large Photogrammetry Model is able to reconstruct 3D objects and scenes from just a few 2D photos, but with a big difference from current pipelines. Here’s why this is a big deal.

If the latest reports are correct, Apple is just a few months away from announcing its thinnest iPhone ever. The so‑called iPhone 17 Air is expected to be just 5.5 mm thick, feature a 6.6‑inch OLED display, and replace the iPhone 16 Plus in this year’s lineup.

So, naturally, Samsung has just announced an ultra‑thin phone of its own.

If you have never listened to PJ Vogt’s Search Engine podcast, you are missing out. Vogt is one of the most inquisitive minds out there. He can turn any seemingly inane fact into an intricate story that often leads to unexpected places.

Recently, he came across a strange fact: iPhone audio messages mentioning the name of a specific restaurant chain wouldn’t get delivered. He set out to find out why, and he did it. Sort of.

Apple has updated the AppKit documentation to inform developers about a significant change coming to the macOS pasteboard, the system-level mechanism for transferring data between applications and Apple devices.

Here’s how it’s going to work:

A little more than five years ago, in the early hours of my birthday, no less, I woke up to what I thought was that intense and prolonged alert that the Apple Watch gives you when it’s about to go dead.

That wasn’t it.

For the past few months, there have been plenty of rumors and reports about Apple’s plans to release AI-enabled wearables. Currently, it looks like Apple’s direct competitors to the Meta Ray-Bans will be launched around 2027, alongside AirPods with cameras, which will offer their own set of AI-enabled features.

While it might be too early to know what exactly they will look like, Apple has just offered a peek at how their AI might work.

To say that Apple has been struggling in the Chinese market is an understatement. Including the most recent fiscal quarter, in which the company reported a 2% year-over-year revenue drop in the country, Apple has seen its numbers stay in the green for only three of the last twelve fiscal quarters. That includes an 11% drop in Q1 2025 and a whopping 13% drop in Q1 2024.

When it comes to the smartphone market, however, Apple isn’t the only non-Chinese company that’s been having it rough.