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Apple is more than just the iPhone manufacturer. This $2 trillion company's decisions impact many facets of technology, financials, and everyday life. When the company is rumored to be getting into something new, the entire world pays attention. And since 1997, AppleInsider has been covering this fascinating electronics maker from every possible angle. From details of the next-generation iPhone and MacBook to key indicators expected to drive the company’s stock price, AppleInsider Daily has you completely covered on a daily basis.
Welcome to the AppleInsider Daily for August 16, 2023. I’m William Gallagher, sitting in for Charles Martin, who is recovering from shock of what Apple has done and then semi-undone with the red End Call button in iOS 17.
Apple moved that button two months ago in the first beta of iOS 17 and nobody cared until last week when it was a calamity that would destroy iPhone users’ muscle memory. With this week’s new sixth developer beta of iOS 17, Apple has moved the button back to where it was - or very nearly. The new version is back centered at the bottom of the screen, but it’s not on its own any more.
Apple’s iOS 17 redesign means that the End Call button now sits in a set of six buttons. And if that isn’t the smallest news you’ve heard today, it’s possible that this next one is.
For there are yet more leaked images out of what are claimed to be the USB-C charging components for the iPhone 15 range. You could already be pretty certain Apple is switching from Lightning to USB-C, but ChargerLab says it has magnified the image of these components and found a mysterious extra processor.
They’re confident that it’s actually a re-timer processor, a controller chip. It could still be anything, but if ChargerLab is right, then what it’s really telling us is that the iPhone 15 range will include a USB-C charger that is also a Thunderbolt/USB4 connector, bring up to 40 gigabits per second, which makes Lightning’s 480 megabits per second seem very, very slow.
One other thing that does make this interesting is not the mysterious processor ChargerLab found, but how many of them it found. The company has images for three iPhone 15 models, and they each have this processor.
Since Apple is expected to release four iPhones, it’s hard to fathom which one will be left behind without Thunderbolt. It might — might — make more sense that all four will have it.
But we’ll find out in September.
More immediately, CodeWeavers has released CrossOver 23, an app that lets you run Windows games on a Mac. You obviously could before, or the previous 22 versions of CrossOver must’ve been rubbish, but this new one has significant steps forward.
Specifically, it now allows you to run DirectX 12 games, plus games that use the EA app. And CrossOver 23 also now has geometry shader support. That will mean that Windows games which previously had graphics hiccups or even just blank screens, should now work on the Mac.
What will definitely work on the Mac because it on runs in a browser, is the new Adobe Express with Firefly. Officially out of beta today, it’s a free graphics creation app that uses generative AI to make completely rubbish graphics. That’s not fair, it’s clever and it’s free — you can get more with it if you do subscribe to Adobe Creative Cloud — but it’s not going to replace any firm’s art department this week.
The photography department, mind you, is likely to be rather happy. For today Moment has announced a T-Series of lenses, with eight new ones that include more elements, a new bayonet system for affixing the lenses to iPhones, and also Android support for some reason.
Moment will continue to sell its famous M-Series lenses, but the T-System has an increased opening to allow them to be used with the larger cameras of more recent iPhones. Prices start at $119, preorders have being taken from today, and shipping is from September 7.
If rumors are right, then that’s just a few days before Apple unveils the new iPhone 15 range, you know, the one with the USB-C connectors. If you buy one, you might enjoy knowing that it may have been made in India. That’s a bigger deal than it sounds because up to now, Apple has only made older iPhones in India, and here it is producing the newest one there right alongside China.
That’s obviously good news for India, it’s also good news for Apple as it means it is at least slightly reducing its reliance on China as its single source for iPhones. But it might also be good news for us as it presumably means we’re unlikely to see the same production delays that kept us waiting weeks for the iPhone 14.
But speaking of the iPhone 14, an Ontario driver and her family have reason to be deeply grateful to that device. For the iPhone 14 range introduced crash detection, and this week it was revealed that this feature got rescuers to a crash site hours before the accident could have been discovered any other way.
Crash Detection alerted emergency services, and it also sent a text message to driver Hannah Ralph’s emergency contacts. It’s not clear yet quite what happened on Road 130 southwest of Highway 10 in Ontario — for instance there’s no news of another vehicle involved. But what is clear is that Hannah Ralph was in a critical condition.
She suffered broken femurs and pelvis, cranial and cervical spine fractures, plus multiple lacerations and substantial blood loss. She would not have been able to call for her help herself, so while she remains in critical care and is having multiple surgeries, she would presumably have died if it were not for Crash Detection.
It’s astonishing that Crash Detection is less than a year old — and also that it’s not much more than two years since AirTags came out. Apple is making a startling difference, just when you think there’s nothing more that can be added to the iPhone.
We’ll find out if Apple manages to do it again with the iPhone 15 in around 27 days — or just 19 more editions of the AppleInsider Daily.
If you would like to support the AppleInsider Daily podcast, we are now accepting sponsorships. See the show notes for details of who to talk to, as well as for links to all the stories covered today.
In the meantime, that’s it for this AppleInsider Daily for August 16, 2023. I’m William Gallagher, thank you very much for listening.