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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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 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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Microsoft's Copilot is getting even better at research thanks to a new feature that combines the power of both OpenAI's ChatGPT and Anthropic's Claude. In a blog post announcing Copilot Cowork's availability, Microsoft debuted the Critique feature that will be used in Microsoft 356 Copilot's Researcher tool. Unlike the standard Copilot, Researcher is designed to tackle more complex tasks with multiple steps.
Now, Researcher is getting even better at that with the Critique feature that uses GPT responses, which are then refined by Claude. In a blog post, Microsoft said that, "this architecture creates a powerful feedback loop that delivers higher-quality results across factual accuracy, analytical breadth, and presentation," adding that Researcher's process is similar to what you see in "academic and professional research settings." Microsoft claims the upgrade scores somewhat higher (compared to the most recent Perplexity Deep Research models) on the Deep Research Accuracy, Completeness, and Objectivity benchmark. On its own, Anthropic has a Research feature that can use multiple Claude agents to provide a comprehensive response to more complex requests.
If you prefer doing research with
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