Apple news · Silicon AI News

November 20261 story

Apple Intelligence reaches China in December, with Qwen

Apple’s own models run the features, and Alibaba’s Qwen helps in Siri, Writing Tools and Visual Intelligence. Developers can test it from November 4, and only iPhones get it for now.

Apple said on October 31 that its first Apple Intelligence features are coming to iPhone users in China. Developers can test them in the latest iOS beta from November 4, and the public release follows in December with iOS 27.3. Through a partnership with Alibaba, its Qwen model adds answers in Siri, Writing Tools and Visual Intelligence.

3 min read

October 202611 stories

Chips & InfrastructureOct 28

Apple’s new MacBook Pro is the first Mac with a touchscreen

The 14-inch and 16-inch models have an OLED screen, the Dynamic Island from the iPhone, and M5 Pro or M5 Max chips. They start at $2,899 and $3,399 and reach stores on November 6.

Apple announced a new MacBook Pro on October 28 with a touch display that it calls PROLED XDR. It is the first Mac that people can control by touching the screen. Orders opened the same day in 30 countries, Apple says. The new laptops sit above the cheaper M6 MacBook Pro that Apple announced a day earlier.

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Chips & InfrastructureOct 28

Apple puts its M6 chip in the MacBook Pro and iMac

The 14-inch MacBook Pro starts at $1,999 and the iMac at $1,499, and both go on sale on November 6. Apple says the M6 runs AI work up to 25% faster than the M5, but no outside test has checked its claims yet.

Apple announced a new 14-inch MacBook Pro and a new 24-inch iMac with its M6 chip on Tuesday, October 27. Both can be ordered from October 28 and go on sale on November 6, in 35 countries and regions, Reuters reports. Apple sells both as machines that run AI on the device. The speed claims are Apple’s own.

3 min read

Agents & AppsOct 28

Apple to add AI helpers using OpenAI to its office apps

Keynote, Pages and Numbers get an assistant in beta in November, for Apple Creator Studio subscribers and in US English only. Outside AI agents will also be able to edit these documents on the Mac.

Apple said on October 27 that Keynote, Pages and Numbers will get an AI assistant built on Apple’s models and OpenAI’s. Logic Pro gets its own assistant, built on Apple and third-party models. The update comes in November for Apple Creator Studio, which costs $12.99 a month. Apple has not said what data goes to OpenAI.

3 min read

Chips & InfrastructureOct 26

Apple’s new iPad mini gets OLED, an A20 Pro and a $699 price

Apple announced a thinner iPad mini with an 8.5-inch OLED screen, its A20 Pro chip and protection against water and dust. Orders open on Wednesday and it goes on sale on November 6. It costs $200 more than the 2024 model did at launch.

Apple’s new iPad mini, announced on Monday, October 26, starts at $699 for Wi-Fi and $849 with cellular. Apple says the A20 Pro chip runs AI tasks up to 4.5 times faster than before. No independent tests are out yet.

3 min read

Safety & SecurityOct 17

Apple tightens App Store rules against AI nudify apps

Apps that let people make or share content, including AI apps, must now guard against nonconsensual intimate images. Apps that hide features until after Apple’s review can be removed, and their makers’ accounts closed.

Apple updated its App Review Guidelines on October 16. Rule 1.2 now names nonconsensual intimate imagery and covers AI content creation apps. A new rule, 2.5.19, says that hiding undocumented features in an app, for example through code obfuscation, is grounds for removing the app and closing the developer’s account.

4 min read

Chips & InfrastructureOct 17

iPhone Duo deliveries slip to late January after preorders

Within about half an hour of preorders opening, new orders for every version of Apple’s $1,999 foldable showed late-January delivery in the US. Apple calls the demand “nothing short of extraordinary”, but gave no order numbers.

Apple opened preorders for the iPhone Duo, its first foldable iPhone, on October 16 in more than 70 countries. By 5:30 a.m. Pacific time, half an hour after the start, Apple’s US store showed January 25 delivery for all eight versions, MacRumors found. Launch-day store pickup also sold out.

3 min read

Agents & AppsOct 16

Apple Intelligence test due in China this month, Cook says

Tim Cook, now Apple’s executive chairman, told China’s The Paper that Live Translation, Writing Tools and Clean Up come first, without Siri AI. Bloomberg reports a public release in December; Apple has not confirmed it.

Apple executive chairman Tim Cook told The Paper, a state-backed news site in Shanghai, on October 15 that Apple has approval to bring the first Apple Intelligence features to users in China. He said a test version will come later in October. Siri AI is not part of it.

3 min read

AI ModelsOct 15

Meta releases Muse Spark Open, an 816B open-weight model

Meta calls it the most capable open-weight model from a US company. An independent test gives it 39 points, and in Meta’s own table two Chinese open models still lead on coding.

Meta released the weights of Muse Spark Open on October 15. The model has 816 billion parameters, of which about 42 billion work on each token, and it can read up to 1 million tokens at once. Meta worked with Apple so the model can run on two or four linked Mac Studio computers.

4 min read

Chips & InfrastructureOct 13

Apple’s $299 HomeView puts Siri AI on a home screen

Apple also showed a new Apple TV 4K and HomePod mini on October 13. Siri AI starts as a test version in English and in eight countries, and HomeView will not be sold in the EU.

Apple unveiled HomeView, a 7-inch screen for the home, at its “Welcome home” event in New York. It costs $299 and arrives on November 13, on the same day as a new $299 Apple TV 4K. A new $149 HomePod mini ships on October 30, but it gets Siri AI only in a later update.

3 min read

Chips & InfrastructureOct 9

PC shipments fall 20% as AI demand lifts memory prices

IDC counts 62.7 million PCs shipped from July to September, and Omdia 58.1 million. Both say buyers stocked up early in the year to beat price rises, and HP and Dell fell the most.

Research firm IDC estimates that 62.7 million PCs were shipped worldwide in the third quarter, 20.1% fewer than a year earlier. Omdia counts 58.1 million, down 21.2%. Lenovo, HP, Dell and Apple all shipped fewer computers. IDC says high prices, driven by the building of AI data centres, are holding buyers back.

3 min read

Safety & SecurityOct 2

Apple to tighten Mac Full Disk Access, citing AI agents

Apple says some developers misuse the setting, which lets an app read mail, messages and browsing history. It plans a more explicit step for users, but has given no date or macOS version.

Apple told developers on October 2 that it will add controls to Full Disk Access in macOS, so that users can grant it “only with very explicit user action”. The setting gives an app access to almost all of a Mac’s files. Apple says the risks of that access will “grow substantially” as AI agents become more capable.

3 min read

September 20262 stories

Agents & AppsSep 15

Siri AI is finally on real devices

The beta starts with useful limits.

Apple began the English beta on September 14. Siri can use messages, email, photos, screen content, and app actions, but access depends on device, region, language, and daily cloud limits.

5 min read

Agents & AppsSep 10

Apple’s first foldable iPhone opens into a 7.6-inch screen

The hinge is only half the test.

The $1,999 iPhone Duo can run two apps side by side. Apple says Apple Pencil support will come later this year. Daily use will show whether apps, battery life, and the folding screen justify the price.

5 min read