iOS 18 could ‘sherlock’ $400M in app revenue
Apple’s practice of leveraging ideas from its third-party developer community to become new iOS and Mac features and apps has a hefty price tag, a new report indicates. Ahead of its fall release, you can download the public beta for iOS 18 right now to get a firsthand look at Apple’s changes, which may affect apps that today have an estimated $393 million in revenue and have been downloaded roughly 58 million times over the past year, according to an analysis by app intelligence firm Appfigures. Every June at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, the iPhone maker teases the upcoming releases…
Figma disables its AI design feature that appeared to be ripping off Apple’s Weather app
Figma CEO Dylan Field says the company will temporarily disable its “Make Design” AI feature that was said to be ripping off the designs of Apple’s own Weather app. The problem was first spotted by Andy Allen, the founder of NotBoring Software, which makes a suite of apps that includes a popular, skinnable Weather app and other utilities. He found by testing Figma’s tool that it would repeatedly reproduce Apple’s Weather app when used as a design aid. Allen had taken to X, formerly Twitter, to accuse Figma of “heavily” training its tool on existing apps — an accusation Field…
Apple brings Apple Intelligence with iOS 18.1 dev beta, but there are a lot of limitations
Users who have signed up for iOS 18’s developer beta can now get the first taste of Apple Intelligence as the company has released some features of its AI suite via an update released on Monday. The company revealed Apple Intelligence at its Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) in June, but the first set of developer beta and public beta releases didn’t have any Apple Intelligence features. Usage limitations The rollout with iOS 18.1 seems to be quite limited. Apple said in June that users with iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, and iPads and Macs that run on M1 chips…
The CrowdStrike outage is a plot point in a rom-com
There’s a man in Florida right now who wants to propose to his girlfriend while they’re on a beach vacation. He couldn’t get the engagement ring before he flew down from New England, but it didn’t seem like that big of an issue — his girlfriend’s daughter Nicole was planning to join them in Florida to celebrate her mom’s birthday, so he asked her to pick up the ring before her flight. In a perfect world, Nicole — who didn’t want her last name to be published in case her mom finds out about the surprise proposal — would fly…
Google releases new ‘open’ AI models with a focus on safety
Google has released a trio of new, “open” generative AI models that it’s calling “safer,” “smaller” and “more transparent” than most — a bold claim, to be sure. They’re additions to Google’s Gemma 2 family of generative models, which debuted back in May. The new models, Gemma 2 2B, ShieldGemma and Gemma Scope, are designed for slightly different applications and use cases, but share in common a safety bent. Google’s Gemma series of models are different from its Gemini models in that Google doesn’t make the source code available for Gemini, which is used by Google’s own products as well…
