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Over the last 50 years, Apple reimagined personal computers, catalyzed the era of the smartphone, enlarged an iPhone and called it the iPad and garnered a strong position in wearable tech through its Watch series and its AirPods. It also popularized software and services like its App Store, FaceTime, iCloud, iMessages and many more. For a lot of us, the first time we pinched-to-zoom on a photo was likely on an iPhone.
However, Apple gives and it takes away. Things have had to change, be removed and consumers have to move on to whatever's new. For better or worse, the weight of Apple's influence has led to entire product categories following suit. Or, more typically, there's resistance, complaining and then… following suit. With the benefit of hindsight, most of these cases are examples of Apple seeing where technology was going and getting ahead of a transition that would have been inevitable. Often, these transitions have caused short-term pain for some, but time has proven Apple (mostly) correct about dropping older tech.
As Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch once said: murder your darlings. Here are some of the darlings we've lost over the years.
The death of the disk drive (1998)
This is a two-parter. The iMac G3 marked Steve Jobs' return. The colorful all-in-one Mac was a new start in many ways. In 1998, Apple ditched the standard ports and myriad cable types of personal computers, going all in
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 iOS 26.5 is now available for developers, and while it doesn't include any new Siri capabilities, there are some major changes for the European Union, and smaller tweaks for features available worldwide.
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 Apple is planning to introduce ads to the Apple Maps app in the near future, and the iOS 26.5 beta lays the groundwork for the feature.
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 Meta is testing a new subscription service for Instagram that offers users "exclusive" features like the ability to post Stories for longer than 24 hours. Screenshots promoting "Instagram Plus" have been spotted by users in the Philippines and Mexico in recent days.
According to screenshots shared by social media consultant Matt Navarra, a subscription to Instagram Plus comes with a number of Story-focused features not otherwise available to Instagram users. This includes the ability to create multiple "audiences" for Stories posts, see info about who has rewatched your Story, search the list of people who have viewed your Story, preview Stories posts, extend Stories longer than 24 hours and create "spotlight" Stories. It also mentions something called "super hearts" for reacting to Stories.
A spokesperson for Meta confirmed the test to Engadget, saying that Instagram Plus is currently available in "a few countries," but didn't say which. A dedicated help page on Meta's website says that this feature is not available to everyone right now." The spokesperson confirmed the feature list shown below, and added that "preview" would allow people to see some of another user's Story without "showing up as a viewer" and that Stories posts could be extended for an additional 24 hours. "Our hope from these tests is to understand what's most valuable to people in a premium feature set," the spokesperson said.
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Trusted Apple leaker Mark Gurman predicts the upcoming iPhone design will eclipse the iPhone 4, 6 and X.
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 Apple accidentally started rolling out Apple Intelligence features in China before receiving regulatory approval, reports Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.
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 Bloomberg's Mark Gurman has high expectations for Apple's first foldable iPhone.
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 March has been an incredibly busy month for Apple, with the company unveiling more than 10 new products and accessories. We said hello to the MacBook Neo at the start of the month, and we bid farewell to the Mac Pro at the end of it.
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 Google today said that Android has set a new record for mobile web performance, making it the fastest mobile platform for web browsing.
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Microsoft is sitting on top of the world right now, thanks to its lead in AI. It's the most valuable company on the planet, with a valuation of more than $3.2 trillion. Its rise was rocket-fueled by its investor relationship with OpenAI, the company that makes the wildly popular generative AI (genAI) chatbot ChatGPT. OpenAI's GPT large language model is also the basis for Microsoft Copilot, the genAI tool that Microsoft is building into just about every one of its products, from GitHub to Windows to Microsoft 365 and beyond.
Microsoft's AI dominance appears insurmountable. But things can change quickly in tech. Google and Apple are in talks to embed Google's genAI tool Gemini into iPhones — a deal that, if it reaches fruition, could unseat Microsoft sooner than you think.
To read this article in full, please click here
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