It was May 2022 when Ikea proudly announced its Diregera hub , bringing Matter support to the company’s smart home line-up. Some two years later, and rather later than scheduled , that upgrade is finally available.

But better late than never, as Matter support means that you can now control any compatible Ikea smart home product via Apple’s Home app …

The Matter standard was created by the Connectivity Standards Alliance as a way of ensuring that any smart home device will work in any ecosystem.

When Apple issues the firmware upgrade needed to use AirPods Pro 2 as a hearing aid, it will put the company into direct competition with existing over-the-counter (OTC) products.

Most OTC hearing aids offer Bluetooth headphone functionality, so a single device will serve both functions either way, but AirPods will offer two significant advantages …

Both AirPods and OTC hearing aids allow you to create a hearing profile designed to address your specific issues. If you have difficulty hearing particular frequencies, for example, the device can boost

If you’re planning on using Apple trade-in to upgrade to an iPhone 16 , you’ll want to quickly book it in for repair if it has any damage.

As one of my fellow tech writers discovered, Apple doesn’t just deduct the necessary repair fee from the value of your device (which could cost as little as $29 if you have AppleCare) – the company instead declares your phone worthless in its online estimate …

Michael Simon discovered this when prepping for his upgrade.

Apple

Apart from some marketing materials, we have not yet seen Apple Intelligence image generation features in action. Image Playgrounds and Genmoji are not currently available in the iOS 18.1 Apple Intelligence betas; they are rumored to launch as part of the iOS 18.2 cycle later this year.

However, Apple has today with WIRED magazine. Pictured above, adorned with a AI watermark applied by WIRED, it depicts Apple SVP Craig Federighi’s dog.

To be clear, Apple sent the un-watermarked image to

Apple software SVP Craig Federighi says that the Private Cloud Compute servers used for Apple Intelligence features are really basic – and with good reason.

The exec says it’s one of a number of decisions the company made to ensure that it’s AI cloud servers form a “hermetically sealed privacy bubble” with your iPhone …

We’ve talked before about Apple’s three-stage hierarchy when it comes to Apple Intelligence features:

1. As much processing as possible is done on-device, with no data sent to servers

According to a new certification from the China Quality Certification Centre, a regulatory body in China, all iPhone 16 models support up to 45W of wired fast charging through the USB-C port.

Update: Ice Universe on X that in practical usage, the true charging speed is actually around 39W, not the full 45W that was revealed in the certification. This is still a huge improvement from prior iPhones, just not as much as you might’ve hoped for. Original post below

The iPhone 16 Pro features an upgraded modem inside courtesy of Qualcomm, bringing several notable improvements. As detailed by , the new iPhone 16 Pro offers an up to 26% faster boost in 5G download speeds thanks to its new Qualcomm Snapdragon X75 modem.

Early test results show an average 23.7% increase in 5G download speeds with the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max across the three major carriers in the United States. Verizon appears to benefit the most from

When Apple introduced the earlier this year, the company quietly added a new privacy feature to it , which is called “Secure Exclave.” Now the company is bringing the same new privacy technology to the iPhone 16 models, which are powered by the A18 chip.

Details about Secure Exclave were first revealed by developer . Essentially Secure Exclave is a new security component part of the M4 chip (and now the A18) that is used to better ensure user privacy.

On the , the component

Historically, AirPods cases have always had a physical button on the back to initiate pairing with your iPhone. With the announced this week, however, Apple is switching things up. Instead of a physical pairing button, the AirPods 4 case has a hidden capacitive button that is used for pairing and resetting.

As first spotted by , the new AirPods 4 case features a capacitive button on the front. When you open the AirPods 4 case and the status light appears on the front, you can double tap the front of the