We’ll all know soon enough, but kudos to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman for breaking some new details 12 hours before Apple’s event begins:

Its device, called the iPhone Duo, will start at $2,000… The entry-level version will include 256 gigabytes of storage, with Apple offering higher-capacity versions that will take the price all the way up to roughly $3,000…. There will be a magnetic hinge system and support for the Apple Pencil stylus.

The Duo will go on sale as early as October and come in white and dark blue.

iPhone Duo is a good name. Not only does it make sense — two screens! — but it references an old Apple product name, and keeps iPhone Ultra in reserve for future use.

I’ve been wondering about Apple Pencil support on the iPhone for some time now. This product does sort of make sense for it, given the larger canvas of an interior screen.

The starting price seems high in practical terms, but also actually quite aggressive given the current out-of-control state of affairs for tech gadget costs. (Obviously the better configurations will escalate rapidly in price, as is Apple’s tradition.)

Gurman also suggests this device won’t ship as quickly as the new iPhone Pro models—again, not too much of a surprise, as that’s what happened with the iPhone X. And as for the colors, well, dark blue is certainly more interesting than another Space Gray. I do wonder why the Color Czar has decided that black is out as a color, but fashion does what it wants.

Anyway, happy Christmas Eve (and Christmas morning) everyone. See you back here after all is revealed.

Go to the linked site.

Read on Six Colors.

Os maiores operadores europeus de telecomunicações estão a discutir a criação de um consórcio para disputar o espectro de satélite que a União Europeia quer reservar para serviços diretos ao telemóvel

The post Operadoras europeias alinham estratégia para levar comunicações por satélite aos telemóveis appeared first on Tek Notícias.

General Motors has been saying for a few years now that it’s going to get rid of CarPlay and Android Auto on its EVs because, well, reasons.

Well, well, well… maybe not. Ian Wright of CarBuzz writes:

The Cadillac configurator is up for several 2027 models, and we spotted that the Lyriq still shows CarPlay and Android Auto being standard. The Lyriq is Cadillac’s first all-electric vehicle and a tech-forward vehicle that we think is becoming one of the best luxury EVs available. So, it piqued our interest that the GM brand was still including the things it was supposed to be phasing out, and we reached out to Cadillac for comment.

“Cadillac is continuing to evolve its infotainment strategy across the EV portfolio, based on customer feedback, while also prioritizing the native, in-vehicle experience,” a Cadillac representative told CarBuzz. And, the language is telling. The plan was to start the phasing out of phone projection with the 2024 Chevrolet Blazer EV, with CEO Mary Barra saying: “We made a decision to prioritize our EV vehicles during this timeframe, and as we go forward, we’ll continue across the portfolio.”

Wright does a good job at spotting the weasel words in the new Cadillac statement. Three years after a bold pronouncement that GM wasn’t interested in listening to its customers and giving them what they wanted, here comes an “evolve[d] infotainment strategy… based on customer feedback.”

Translation: Oh, people actually do want CarPlay, so we probably should let them have it, or they’re not going to want to buy our cars.

This isn’t how this story needed to go, but if GM wants to silently walk back its stupid pronouncement from 2023, it’s still a win for anyone in the market for a new car.

Go to the linked site.

Read on Six Colors.

Russia's attempt to replicate SpaceX's Starlink satellite network seems to be moving as slowly as the front lines in eastern Ukraine.

The Rassvet program, often billed as Russia's answer to Starlink, started launching its first operational satellites earlier this year. Two launches, one in March and a second in July, have delivered 32 Rassvet satellites to low-Earth orbit, some 10 percent of the roughly 300 Rassvet spacecraft Russia aims to put into orbit by the end of next year to provide connectivity for military and civilian users. The company in charge of Rassvet, Bureau 1440, wants to deploy 924 satellites by 2035.

But none of the 32 satellites launched so far have reached the 500-mile (800-kilometer) orbit they were designed to operate in. The rockets that launched the first two batches of Rassvets released the satellites much closer to Earth, and the satellites were expected to use their own plasma engines to raise their orbits over the next few months.

Read full article

Comments

© Bureau 1440

Joe Lemire of Sports Business Journal has a detailed story about how MLB came to hire Jason Weingradt, the developer behind the amazing baseball app Mosaic:

By drawing on public application programming interfaces (APIs) from the league and other sources, Weingradt built an app in TestFlight — Apple’s home for products still in beta — and shared his new creation, Mosaic, by posting on Threads and tagging #buildinpublic to solicit early adopter feedback….

That very same day, MLB Executive Vice President Kenny Gersh received a Slack message from colleagues alerting him to Mosaic and asking if the league’s legal team should get involved. While of course not wanting just any developer to profit from baseball’s IP, Gersh appreciated that this was a controlled environment that required an MLB.tv subscription to access premium features, so he replied, “Not ideal, but it’s not a huge problem yet. Maybe we’ll hire.”

They hired. I know there’s a lot of skepticism out there about whether the big organization will just crush the Little App That Could. To me, it says a lot about MLB’s tech brain trust that they embraced Weingradt and that he’s still dropping incredibly impressive new features into the app on a regular basis.

Go to the linked site.

Read on Six Colors.

Apple’s overhaul of Siri and its expansion of Apple Intelligence are extensive. Take Control publisher Joe Kissell and I looked at this mountain of changes and opted to research and write an entirely new book, Take Control of Siri AI and Apple Intelligence, to help us get a handle on what’s new and thus pass it along to readers. This title is now available in its 1.0 release, ahead of the version 27 operating systems shipping in September. We also have our books on iOS 27/iPadOS 27 and Golden Gate available in 1.0 versions. All will receive free updates when the production versions ship.

We look at everything related to Siri AI, including the new Siri app and its ability to handle contextually aware conversations, the expansion of Apple Intelligence into new apps, enhancements to accessibility features, and, in particular, Visual Intelligence’s heightened prominence as a camera feature on the iPhone and iPad. We also dive into how Apple’s Private Compute Cloud works and associated privacy issues, particularly around the company’s extension of this on-device processing to Apple-managed hardware at Google Cloud.

Go to the linked site.

Read on Six Colors.

SpaceX made Florida's Space Coast home to the world's busiest spaceport for a decade, but that will change this year. The company is significantly cutting the number of launches from Florida until Starship arrives, a senior SpaceX official confirmed Tuesday.

The Falcon 9 rocket has been SpaceX's workhorse, routinely launching batches of satellites for the company's Starlink network, primarily from launch pads at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. There were 165 Falcon 9 launches last year—about three flights per week—and about 75 percent of them carried Starlink satellites.

This year is different. SpaceX has launched more missions from its West Coast launch pad at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California since January, and this trend will amplify for the rest of the year.

Read full article

Comments

© SpaceX

Today Relay launched the public and private feeds of my new podcast, Designed in California. If you’re interested in the history of Apple, check it out. The first few episodes in the feed are episodes we previously released in the Upgrade podcast feed; our first all-new episode debuts next week.

If you’re a Kickstarter backer who pledged at a level where you’ll get the special member feeds, check your messages for information about how to redeem that pledge and get access to the special feeds.

And if you didn’t back the Kickstarter, you can now join us via Relay and get access to entire series of the show all at once, ad free. Next week, members will receive the entirety of our series about Apple’s mid-90s Mac OS crisis that led to the company buying NeXT and bringing back Steve Jobs, which led to the creation of Mac OS X. Those episodes will play out over the next six weeks in the main feed, but members will get all seven episodes, five hours and 15 minutes of content, all at once. (Plus the first of our monthly bonus episodes.)

There’s also a YouTube channel, and Spotify users will find that video version available within Spotify as well.

Go to the linked site.

Read on Six Colors.

The OWC USB-C Quad HDMI 4K Display Adapter with DisplayLink lets a Mac drive four 4K monitors through a single USB-C connection. Chuck  explains how it simplified his multi-display setup and bypasses native Mac display limitations using DisplayLink software. The adapter supports individual monitor resolutions and offers a straightforward path to a multi-monitor setup. 

💾

At NAB 2026, Chuck Joiner talks with Ryan Burke, Portfolio Director for RØDE about the new RodeLink 2 UHF wireless system, developed with Lectrosonics expertise. The discussion covers interference-resistant UHF performance, 32-bit float recording, timecode, adaptive power, battery life, and removable storage media.  Ryan also provided a look at the new RODECaster Studio AI audio editing app for podcasters. 

💾

Mobile World Live (MWL) brings you our top three picks of the week as SpaceX CEO Elon Musk outlined Starlink’s global broadband ambitions, Verizon lifted the lid on the network behind the FIFA World Cup 2026 and the World Bank urged developing nations to boost AI adoption.

Musk targets global broadband domination with Starlink

What happened: Musk outlined plans to increase Starlink’s network capacity 100-fold, claiming the satellite broadband business could eventually “deliver a majority of the world’s internet”.

Why it matters:  The tech mogul said the goal hinges on the rollout of an expanded V3 satellite constellation capable of delivering around 10 times the performance of current V2 models. To support the plan, the company asked the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for approval to deploy up to 100,000 low-Earth-orbit V3 satellites, supplementing the roughly 9,600 V2 satellites already in orbit. Musk argued the additional capacity would allow Starlink to eventually carry a majority of global internet traffic in countries where the service is authorised to operate, while driving a tenfold increase in Starlink revenue even if revenue per bit falls by 90%. Quilty Space founder and CEO Chris Quilty told MWL that the company’s “bold claim” flouts its “prior statements that Starlink was most appropriate for rural user”. While V3 satellites are expected to provide a “10x boost”, he noted “aggregate network capacity is a misleading metric because capacity is geographically distributed while demand is geographically concentrated”. Earlier this week, SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell claimed that Starlink Mobile could compete directly with operators including AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile US using upgraded satellites and additional spectrum.

Musk targets global broadband domination with Starlink

Podcast: Inside Verizon’s World Cup connectivity

What happened: In the latest edition of the MWL podcast, Kavit and Justin sat down with Verizon wireless chief network officer Srini Kalapala, who detailed how the operator delivered connectivity as the official network provider for the FIFA World Cup 2026.

Why it matters: Earlier this month, the operator revealed its network carried almost 500TB of data across all US host stadiums, including 29.2TB during the final between Argentina and Spain. To handle demand, Verizon boosted stadium capacity by three to five times, installed thousands of under-seat antennas, deployed nearly 140 small cells around venues and fan zones, and laid 80,000 miles of fibre to transport broadcast feeds from all World Cup stadiums. In the podcast, Kalapala described the tournament’s “104 games in 39 days across 18 different stadiums in three countries” as “probably one of the largest projects that we worked on.” He explained Verizon had to ensure stadiums comprising 70,000 to 85,000 people could access “good quality mobile connectivity”, while also delivering “the most reliable network” for broadcasters and powering private 5G applications including referee cameras.

Podcast: Inside Verizon’s World Cup connectivity

World Bank urges lower income nations to grasp AI opportunity

What happened: The World Bank called on developing economies to accelerate AI adoption, arguing low-cost, locally adapted tools could accelerate economic development without requiring frontier models or hefty AI infrastructure investments.

Why it matters: In its World Development Report 2026: The Promise of Artificial Intelligence, the organisation said AI “could allow developing countries to do in a decade what might otherwise take a century”, provided governments address gaps in electricity, internet access, digital skills and institutions. World Bank SVP and chief economist Indermit Gill said AI has “thrown developing economies a lifeline”, but warned countries “must hurry” because the technology is “spreading faster and is more context-specific than earlier general-purpose technologies”. He added many high-impact use cases do not require large models or data centres, instead relying on “small, low-cost AI tools” tailored to local conditions. The report highlighted applications across healthcare, agriculture, tax collection and judicial services, while warning AI could also deepen inequality and weaken public trust without appropriate action. Foresight Communications Consultancy CEO Howaida Nadim argued the World Bank’s framework recognises that “greater opportunity lies in adopting proven tools and adapting them to local languages, data, institutions and development priorities”. She added “the next AI divide” might be “between those that successfully adapt AI to their development needs and those that remain primarily consumers of systems built elsewhere”.

World Bank urges lower income nations to grasp AI opportunity

The post The Friday File: Starlink; Verizon; World Bank appeared first on Mobile World Live.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk (pictured) highlighted an ambitious growth plan for the company’s Starlink broadband service, forecasting a hundredfold increase in total delivered bandwidth driven by its next-generation V3 satellite constellation.

Speaking on SpaceX’s first earnings call as a public company, Musk and president Gwynne Shotwell detailed a long-term strategy to capture a majority of global internet traffic in accessible markets.

To support the push, the operator recently applied to the Federal Communications Commission seeking approval to deploy up to 100,000 low-Earth-orbit satellites for its V3 satellite network, supplementing the approximately 9,600 broadband V2 birds currently in orbit.

SpaceX’s Starlink broadband customers doubled to 12 million year-over-year despite price increases for the service. Starlink ended Q2 with service availability in 167 markets “with some very exciting announcements coming soon,” he said.

Those numbers are the tip of the iceberg, according to Musk.  

“This is a big deal,” he said. “It’s kind of hard for people to wrap their minds around this, but it’s not out of the question that at some point, Starlink will deliver a majority of the world’s internet, at least in countries where we’re allowed to operate.”

Musk stated individual Starlink V3 satellites deliver roughly 10 times the performance of V2 models. While V2 hardware typically maxes out between 100Mb/s and 450Mb/s depending on network congestion, the V3 constellation deployment is designed to unlock gigabit-class downlinks for standard end users.

Musk stated a V3 Starlink bird will launch on Starship flight 14, but this time they’ll enter an “operational orbit.” Last month’s Starship flight sent up a batch of V3 satellites as part of a suborbital test.

“The Starlink V3 satellite is about an order of magnitude more capable than the Starlink V2 satellite, which was already a very capable satellite,” he explained. “And we expect to launch about an order of magnitude more Starlink V3 satellites.

Combined with plans to launch 10 times as many V3 birds, the upgraded constellation is projected to increase overall bandwidth capacity by two orders of magnitude. He emphasised that even if revenue per bit decreased by 90%, the expansion will still drive a tenfold increase in Starlink revenue.

“It’s certainly a bold claim and one that contravenes the company’s prior statements that Starlink was most appropriate for rural users,” Quilty Space founder and CEO Chris Quilty told Mobile World Live. “Starlink V3 will provide a 10x boost, reaching 8Pb/s of downlink capacity, but aggregate network capacity is a misleading metric because capacity is geographically distributed while demand is geographically concentrated.”

AI compute capacity
SpaceX ended Q2 with 1.4 gigawatts of compute capacity, up from 1 gigawatt in the prior quarter and 400 megawatts a year ago.

“We expect to end this year with over 2 gigawatts of compute,” Musk stated.

Asked about the outlook for compute capacity, Musk revised his earlier target upward on the call. Rather than the roughly 10 gigawatts previously floated for the end of 2027, he said SpaceX is now aiming for approximately 15 gigawatts of power and cooling capacity online by the end of next year, with a stretch goal of 20 gigawatts.

“We’re actually aiming to far exceed that gigawatt number in terms of power online, power cooling, and electrical equipment,” he explained.

“I don’t think we’re going to achieve 20 gigawatts, but we want to have a series of projects that cumulatively come to 20 gigawatts by the end of next year,” he added. “Our goal is to have far more power, cooling, and electrical equipment than we have GPUs. That’s a logical thing to do given the relative expense of GPUs.”

He said SpaceX is taking the expertise it uses for rockets and satellites and applying it to scaling terrestrial data centres.

“SpaceX as a company is incredibly good at hardware,” Musk said.

Going forward on data centres, Musk said SpaceX has decided “to build exclusively on Nvidia, because we think the Vera Rubin is the best architecture.”

The post Musk targets global broadband domination with Starlink appeared first on Mobile World Live.

Another wave of constellations has staked claims for communications satellites in non-geostationary orbit (NGSO), but what hope do newcomers have alongside the industry’s entrenched, vertically integrated giants? A mix of […]

The post Finding room in Starlink’s shadow appeared first on SpaceNews.

A story by 404 Media’s Joseph Cox, who last month broke the news about a flaw in Apple’s Hide My Email feature, is now back to report that iCloud Private Relay, a feature that is supposed to obfuscate users’ IP addresses, may not be so private:

A series of issues in Apple’s web browser engine — the tech underlying all browsers on iOS — means that Apple’s iCloud Private Relay tool, which is supposed to hide a user’s IP address, in many cases doesn’t actually work. Instead, the issues mean a malicious attacker can set up a website to learn a Private Relay user’s real IP address, or that many websites have also already collected this information incidentally. The issues also impact OnionBrowser, an iOS app for browsing the web through the Tor anonymity network, the researchers who discovered the issues say.

Fascinatingly, this flaw seems to be due to the implementation of passkeys: the authentication happens out of band, in a separate connection, and therefore never runs through Private Relay.

The security researchers who uncovered the issue have put up a site that lets you check if you’re affected; I wasn’t able to test it this morning, as the Wi-Fi network I’m using as of this writing doesn’t support Private Relay at all. (Joke’s on me, I guess!) They’ve also reported the vulnerability to Apple, who did not provide a timeline for fixing it, but allowed them to disclose the issue nonetheless.

Cox points out that along with the Hide My Email bug, this is the second time that a vulnerability has affected Apple’s paid privacy features, since both are part of the iCloud+ subscription. Though Apple did finally patch the Hide My Email flaw late last month, a second flaw is not a great look for a company that prides itself on privacy and security.

Go to the linked site.

Read on Six Colors.

SpaceX shares dropped on Wednesday after Elon Musk’s plans for blockbuster spending to position his AI and rocket company as a data center developer spooked investors.

SpaceX surpassed analysts’ expectations in Tuesday’s debut earnings report, posting quarterly revenues of $7.8 billion, well above analysts’ estimates of $6.82 billion and up 92 percent from a year earlier. It posted a net loss of about $541 million, better than estimates of $2.12 billion.

But shares in SpaceX fell 10 percent in early trading after it reported capital expenditure of almost $16 billion on AI, double the previous quarter and well above Wall Street’s expectations. It said spending would persist at current levels for at least two more quarters.

Read full article

Comments

© Timothy A Clary/GEtty

SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell claimed Starlink Mobile is positioned to compete directly with AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile US, pointing to the trio’s roughly $600 billion in combined annual revenue as a measure of the opportunity.

Speaking on SpaceX’s Q2 earnings call, Shotwell said the service’s capability could improve roughly 100-fold once the company deploys next-generation birds and spectrum acquired from EchoStar, with commercial service targeted to begin by the end of next year.

Shotwell said the current direct-to-cell system operates using around 5MHz of bandwidth through local telco partners, but SpaceX now has access to 65MHz of bandwidth via the EchoStar spectrum deal, alongside plans to deploy roughly 10 times as many satellites.

“So, simplifying, you could look at Starlink Mobile leveraging the next-generation satellite and the EchoStar spectrum as being 100 times better, 10 times 10 better than what we’ve got right now,” she said, adding the upgraded service already supports voice and video calls over apps such as Signal and WhatsApp.

Shotwell described a terrestrial deployment approach built around Starlink’s existing broadband hardware rather than a conventional cell tower build-out.

“You could put a base station, a cellular base station on the gear that holds a Starlink broadband dish,” she said. “You can have kind of these little femtocells around the country and you deploy that as you need it. You don’t have to necessarily spend many billions of dollars in low band spectrum all upfront before you deploy your system.”

She was reluctant to give a specific capex figure for the terrestrial build-out.

“We have a lot of really kind of great and new ideas for how we’re going to do that,” she said. “And I think it will be quite capex efficient.”

CEO Elon Musk elaborated on the same point, saying it was worth emphasising given its importance to the economics of the rollout.

Rather than deploying expensive, hard-to-site large cellular base stations, he said SpaceX expects to deploy a large number of small stations which are effectively Starlink dishes also equipped to provide connectivity in mobile spectrum bands.

“The Starlink antennas are located on the roofs of houses and businesses,” he said. “So, they’ve got a sort of a clear view for providing connectivity directly to cell phones on the ground.”

Musk expects the resulting service to offer “better and higher bandwidth than what is currently available from cellular providers”.

Shotwell stated SpaceX expects strong customer uptake once the improved service launches.

“I anticipate us to be able to acquire quite a few of their customers, because I think our service will be better,” she said, citing Starlink Mobile’s ability to eliminate dead zones and maintain service during natural disasters, given the relative stability of the satellite environment compared with terrestrial infrastructure on the ground.

Q2 numbers
SpaceX reported Q2 revenue of $7.8 billion, up 92 per cent year-on-year from $4.1 billion, in the company’s first results release since going public in June.

Net loss narrowed to $541 million, an improvement of $467 million from the $1 billion loss posted a year earlier.

Capex surged to $18.4 billion for the quarter, up from $2.8 billion a year earlier, driven overwhelmingly by the AI segment where it reached $15.8 billion. Space segment capex came in at $1.2 billion and Connectivity capex at $1.4 billion.

The AI division, spanning Grok, X, cloud infrastructure and advertising, posted revenue of $2.6 billion, up 247%, driven by new Cloud Services Agreements and Grok/X subscription growth.

The business generates compute-contract revenue from customers including Anthropic, Google and Reflection AI, though some recurring revenue has yet to be recognised.

The segment narrowed its operating loss 49% quarter-on-quarter to $1.3 billion, though SpaceX cautioned the unit needs sustained investment to turn profitable. It signed $14.1 billion in contracted Cloud Services Agreements and announced a $60 billion deal to acquire coding tool Cursor.

Connectivity, the Starlink-led segment, generated $4.3 billion in revenue, up 66%, with operating income up 79% to $1.7 billion. Starlink subscribers doubled to 12 million.

The Space segment posted revenue of $962 million, up 29% with an operating loss of $542 million as the company invested heavily in Starship.

SpaceX ended the quarter with $100 billion in cash and marketable securities, and a $47.5 billion backlog.

The post SpaceX claims Starlink Mobile will rival AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile US appeared first on Mobile World Live.

SpaceX plans to start deploying upgraded Starlink satellites into orbit on the next flight of its Starship vehicle, scheduled for as soon as the end of the month.

The post SpaceX to begin Starship orbital flights appeared first on SpaceNews.

From an un-bylined post on OpenAI’s site:

Apple’s request for a preliminary injunction is both based on false information and completely unnecessary because we do not have, nor want, any of their trade secrets. We’re much more interested in building innovative products and technologies that push the frontier.

The post itself includes numerous transcripts of message conversations¹ and emails that supposedly bolster OpenAI’s case that it studiously avoided using Apple information.

This is, as The Verge’s Jess Wetherbed notes, a pure public opinion play. Because if they have evidence, the only correct answer is “we’ll see you in court.”

What kept running through my head while reading this was the old legal chestnut: “If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts. If you have the law on your side, pound the law. If you have neither on your side, pound the table.”

Go to the linked site.

Read on Six Colors.

Além de compartilhar uma página da web usando um link normal, o navegador Mozilla Firefox também permite enviar um endereço da web de outra forma.

Mais precisamente, trata-se da geração de um código QR (QR code) — que pode, posteriormente, ser lido a partir de qualquer câmera ou compartilhado em uma postagem, por exemplo.

Veja como fazer isso no seu Mac! 👨‍💻

1. Com o Firefox aberto no seu computador, siga um dos seguintes procedimentos:
   • Clique com o botão direito em cima da aba;
   • Vá até “Arquivo”, na barra de menus;

2. Selecione “Compartilhar” e “Gerar código QR…”.

3. Clique em “Salvar” para fazer o download do código ou em “Copiar” para que ele seja copiado para a área de transferência.

In March 2021, while serving as a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, I hosted a discussion with General Chance Saltzman, now Chief of Space Operations for the United States […]

The post The new space wars: lessons from Ukraine and the Middle East appeared first on SpaceNews.