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Early reviews of the latest MacBook Pro gush with praise for the active OLED display, but are more muted about the touchscreen. (via Cult of Mac - Your source for the latest Apple news, rumors, analysis, reviews, how-tos and deals.)

Apple's first 27.3 betas bring expanded Siri AI actions, a redesigned Health app, and new Fitness+ features, alongside conversation summaries on the Apple Watch. This week's episode of The MacRumors Show takes a closer look at the updates. Subscribe to The MacRumors Show YouTube channel for more videos ‌Siri‌ AI gains additional actions across Apple's apps, including unsubscribing from mailing lists, organizing files, and managing Safari tabs. In Weather, ‌Siri‌ can add saved locations and toggle severe weather or next-hour precipitation notifications. The additions extend the assistant's usefulness for everyday tasks, although the full range of supported requests can still be difficult to discover. A new developer preview also enables more flexible third-party integrations. Developers can supply custom actions and skills that help ‌Siri‌ coordinate multiple steps, improving its handling of more complicated requests. App Store submissions for these integrations are scheduled to open in the spring. Safari adds vertical tabs and Adaptive Dark Mode, allowing websites without their own dark appearance to adopt one automatically. The iPhone Duo also gains horizontal Reachability and a revised keyboard, making its wider outer display easier to operate with one hand. Apple Fitness+ gains Gym Strength, which creates personalized four-week plans based on available equipment and workout preferences. Short videos from Fitness+ trainers demonstrate proper form, extending the service beyond workouts that require following an entire video session. The initial beta's equipment selection and scheduling options nevertheless leave room for improvement, particularly for users whose routines vary from week to week. The redesigned Health app returns with Insights and Longevity sections, turning collected measurements into more accessible guidance and longer-term health assessments. iPhone Duo-style StandBy mode displays bring more customizable clocks, Calendar views, and Weather…

Apple today announced that more than 100,000 apps have been optimized for the iPhone Duo, released two weeks ago. We confirmed that this figure refers to apps built with the iOS 27.1 SDK or later, meaning these apps fill the full width of the iPhone Duo's inner and outer displays and have vertical controls in the status bar. A statement from Susan Prescott, Apple's Vice President of Worldwide Developer Relations: It's been wonderful to see how quickly developers have embraced iPhone Duo, and we're grateful for their creativity and innovation. Today there are well over 100,000 apps built for iPhone Duo already live on the App Store, and thousands of optimized apps are being added to the store each day. In the last month alone, thousands of developers have joined us for workshops in 19 cities around the world to experience iPhone Duo firsthand and bring updated apps to their users. The enthusiasm has been incredible, and we're excited to see the pace of updates continue to accelerate as more and more apps optimize for iPhone Duo. Apple said thousands of apps optimized for the iPhone Duo are being added to the App Store each day, with recent examples including Microsoft's Excel, OneNote, PowerPoint, and Word apps, along with the Etsy, Goodnotes, Halide Mark III, NBA, NHL, and Zoom apps. Other apps optimized for the device include Amazon Prime Video, Fantastical, Flighty, Instagram, MLB, Netflix, SmartGym, WhatsApp, YouTube, and more. There are too many to list. Apps optimized for the iPhone Duo have a "Made for iPhone Duo" badge in their App Store listings on the device, making them easy to identify. iOS 27.2 added Apple Pencil (USB-C) support to the iPhone Duo, enabling users to draw in apps like Procreate Pocket, take notes in Apple Notes, Fineliner, and TypeDraw, and mark up documents in apps like Preview on the device. On the other hand, with millions of apps available in the App Store, there are unsurprisingly many apps that are still not optimized for the…

Apple has rolled out its holiday theming at the online Apple Store, and with it a new, extended return policy has just been put into place. Here are the details. more…

I've been wanting to try 3D printing, people tell me. Which printer should I get? I finally have a fairly easy answer: the Bambu Lab P2S Combo. The auto-loading, fully enclosed touchscreen printer is one of the very few I can recommend. It's the only one I'd buy for myself. It's on sale for $649 […]

Meta has added live voice conversations to Muse, its personal AI agent, so users can talk to it instead of typing. The update also gives Muse an animated avatar that reacts as the conversation goes on. The feature is available now in the Muse app on phones, the web and Mac, but only in the […] This story continues at The Next Web

According to a new rumor, Samsung's upcoming Galaxy S27 Pro and Galaxy S27 Ultra will stick to Snapdragon chipsets in South Korea, despite the Exynos 2700 reportedly outperforming Qualcomm's offering in internal tests. Tipster yeux1122 claims that Samsung's decision to use Snapdragon chipsets in its two upcoming flagships is driven by cost considerations, with the company focusing on reducing costs during the design and component selection process. Galaxy S27 Pro leaked render If this turns out to be the final decision, the Galaxy S27 Ultra is expected to be powered by the...

Toei, the Japanese studio giant behind “Kamen Rider” and the Super Sentai series that became “Power Rangers,” has drawn up rules for generative AI and started using AI in its film and video production, president and CEO Yoshimura Fumio said at the Taiwan Creative Content Fest (TCCF) in Taipei. A dedicated team at the company […]

Levitating trains, ultra-efficient energy storage, and quantum computers: superconductivity could unlock a wealth of possibilities for the future. New research led by scientists from Utrecht, Leiden, and Munich has now shed light on one of the key requirements for achieving superconductivity at room temperature. Their findings, published in Science, bring scientists a step closer to understanding how this might be achieved.

Pointless after eight games, Karen Hills’ team are struggling to compete against clubs with chunkier wallets Played eight, lost eight. Welcome to the Women’s Super League, Charlton Athletic, a club in danger of being chewed up, toyed with and spat straight back out by the top tier. Bruised by their 6-0 defeat against Chelsea on Sunday, last season’s playoff winners are finding WSL life tough, conceding more than three goals per game on average and struggling to compete against clubs with chunkier wallets. But are they underperforming or are they merely the victims of their own success? Continue reading...

Apple released the iPhone Duo two weeks ago, and the app story is quickly taking shape. In a new statement to 9to5Mac, Apple has revealed that there are already “well over 100,000 apps” on the App Store designed for iPhone Duo, and thousands are being added each day. more…

Researchers at the Francis Crick Institute have identified a specialized lipid barrier in the fruit fly pupa that protects against dehydration in dry and hot environments. Their findings also expose the lipid barrier's limit, suggesting that insects in some regions of the world may struggle to adapt to climate change.

One of the great quests in all of science is to discover, at a fundamental level, what the Universe is actually made of. If you took every amount of matter and energy that existed — or even could exist — and cut it up into its smallest possible chunks, until only something that was uncuttable was left, you’d be left with the fundamental, elementary particles that composed our Universe. In physics, this took us first down to the level of the atom, then to atomic nuclei and electrons, then to protons, neutrons, and electrons, and finally to our modern Standard Model of elementary particles: complete with quarks, charged leptons, neutrinos, their antimatter counterparts, the gluons, the photon, the W-and-Z bosons, and one additional unique particle, the Higgs boson. Of all of those particles, the Higgs boson is the most recently discovered particle: found only at particle accelerators, like the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, in 2012. But what’s the story of the Higgs boson? What makes it so unique, where does it come from, and how does it fit in with everything else that we know? That’s what Vu H Nguyen wants to know, asking: “Can you explain the Higgs boson in depth? [It is] difficult for me to understand, but I think this is very important in particle physics. Maybe you can explain it in an easier way?” When we think about matter, we normally think about “fundamental” in the way we outlined above: by cutting it up into its smallest indivisible component parts. But there’s more to the story, and the Higgs boson requires us to go deeper than any other known particle in order to understand it. Here’s the story. From macroscopic scales down to subatomic ones, the sizes of the fundamental particles play only a small role in determining the sizes of composite structures. Whether the building blocks are truly fundamental and/or point-like particles is still not known, but we do understand the Universe from large, cosmic scales down to tiny, subatomic ones. The scale of…

Maro Itoje must make sure his side’s emotions do not boil over and the breakdown battle will be pivotal England are riled up, they feel backed into a corner and if history shows us anything, it is that they tend to perform when their backs are against the wall. It’s a very English trait and Steve Borthwick’s tenure has been punctuated with performances when his side feel as though they have a point to prove. The players certainly have that as they begin their autumn campaign against Australia. It actually makes me more confident in an England victory. They will have a siege mentality, just as they did against France in the Six Nations – they might not have won that match but it was the best performance of the campaign by some distance. They will want to put on a real show of unity and that can have a galvanising effect. I was nervous about this fixture at the start of the week; I’m less so now. Continue reading...

Cairngorms: The scale and depth of damage is shocking, but there are precious small signs of recovery It’s over three months since the fire started that eventually engulfed 25 square kilometres of moorland and forest in the Cairngorms. I’ve now seen much of the area where the fire raged and have been shocked at the blackness of the land, how many of the moorland pines are dark as charcoal, their needles an unnaturally singed rust colour that goes on into the far distance, into the forest itself. I joined a party going up one of the affected glens to plant over 3,000 trees: cell-grown goat and creeping willow, downy birch and alder – montane species, often miniature varieties, that previously have grown in this habitat but been devastated by overgrazing. The seeds had been collected from nearby remnant populations and grown in the Cairngorms Connect Tree Nursery, part of an ongoing programme of landscape restoration. Continue reading...

Paramount’s reimagining of G.I. Joe under director Danny McBride and starring Bradley Cooper as Duke will hit theaters on Oct. 20, 2028. As we previously told you McBride wrote the screenplay with Jeff Fradley and John Carcieri. The plot is being kept in a high security location much like the G.I. Joe team’s base. The […]

Trafford made just four Premier League appearances for Manchester City last term after the arrival of Gianluigi Donnarumma dashed his hopes of becoming number one

“Entertainment Tonight” is widening its lead as the No. 1 syndicated newsmagazine, averaging 2.99 million viewers during the week of Oct. 5, according to Nielsen live+same-day ratings. That week was significant to the CBS Media Ventures-produced and distributed “Entertainment Tonight,” as it coincided with the CBS network’s primetime premiere week. “ET” was up 9% vs. […]

The most enjoyable conversations strike a balance between exploring a topic and pulling in fresh ideas, study finds As an early stab at rules for conversation, Cicero did a fine job: watch your tone, never look bored, never lose your temper and never ramble on, particularly about yourself, he advised. Now scientists have followed in the great orator’s footsteps and discovered a telltale signature of an enjoyable chinwag. The secret of a mutually satisfying exchange is a healthy dose of pink noise, they say. Continue reading...

EXCLUSIVE: One of the most fun-sounding projects on sale at the upcoming AFM will be the Matthew Vaughn-produced irreverent action-comedy Stuntnuts, the Kick-Ass and Kingsman filmmaker’s homage to the largely unheralded men and women who carry out the death-defying stunts in the movies we love. Stuntnuts will have a first market screening at the AFM […]