Apple CEO Tim Cook has described the Los Angeles wildfires as “heartbreaking,” and said that the company will be making a donation to assist the recovery effort.

Multiple fires across parts of LA have so far led to at least five deaths, and forced more than 130,000 people to abandon their homes, and it’s feared there is more to come …

I’m a great fan of robot cleaners, and they’ve grown more capable over the years. They started with vacuuming, then added mopping, then auto-emptying.

But this year’s CES announcements go further, and I can’t help feeling like companies are now just adding capabilities purely to have something to talk about …

It says a lot about Apple’s design that the MacBook Air is seen as the ultimate standard targeted by PC laptop brands. Just matching the aesthetics and performance of the machine is seen as a tough goal, but ASUS may have gone one better with its new Zenbook A14.

The new machine not only succeeds in emulating the look of the MacBook Air, but exceeds its specs in no fewer than five different ways – including being even lighter …

You have to feel sorry for Intel at this point. Not only has Apple left its CPUs in the dust, but AMD’s new Ryzan AI Max chips claim to do the same to Intel’s flagship Core Ultra 9 288V.

The new chips take the same approach as Apple Silicon in combining CPU, GPU, and unified memory. AMD doesn’t credit Apple with the idea, but does admit the chip wouldn’t exist without the Cupertino company …

Oura remains the king of the smart ring business – at least until Apple enters the arena – but two competitors are trying very different approaches in launching their own models.

French branch Circular hasn’t made much progress to date, thanks to a plastic construction and an absence of wireless charging, but it has fixed both issues in its latest model …

Washington State is suing T-Mobile over a 2021 security breach which exposed the personal data of some 79 million people, including 2M Washington residents. Data exposed included social security numbers, phone numbers, physical addresses, unique IMEI numbers, and driver’s license information.

The carrier is accused of failing to follow industry-standard cybersecurity processes, which allowed the breach to go unnoticed for four months …

Apple’s long-term goal for Vision Pro is believed to be an Apple Glasses product, in which an ordinary-looking pair of glasses will be able to display both text and AR content.

We’ve seen some competitors take early steps in that direction, and the RayNeo X3 Pro AR glasses look like the closest thing we’ve yet seen in a real-world product …

Around fifty Apple employees have been fired for allegedly defrauding the company via its Matching Grants program, in which the company agrees to match charitable donations made by employees.

So far, six of the former Bay Area employees have also been charged with tax fraud relating to fake donations …

Depending on the model, an Apple Silicon MacBook Pro officially supports between one and three external displays, but a software workaround lets you boost that number.

The new Plugable UD-7400PD dock takes advantage of that fact to provide a very neat way to allow even an M1 MacBook Pro to simultaneously drive up to five external monitors …

The iPhone 16 is still banned from sale in Indonesia, despite Apple promising to invest a billion dollars in the country’s economy.

Apple had initially had offers of first $10M and then $100M rejected by the Indonesian government, before offering a cool billion dollars’ worth of manufacturing – which is exactly what the country demanded …

There are plenty of third-party apps that will create automated lighting scenes with Philips Hue products, but a report that the company will be launching this feature in the official app has today been confirmed.

Users will be able to request AI-generated scenes using either voice or text, with the company citing the example “Give me a scene for a garden party” …

Writing at Six Colors, veteran tech writer Jason Snell thinks Apple’s plan to address the Apple Intelligence summaries mess doesn’t go far enough, and has three suggestions for the company.

The post follows a series of embarrassing mistakes in attempted summaries of news stories, which have variously claimed that Luigi Mangione shot himself, announced the winner of a competition which hadn’t even taken place, and reported the non-existent coming out of a tennis player …

While some parents treat their kids to an Apple Watch, the Pinwheel Watch aims to offer an interesting alternative. The $160 cellular smartwatch combines strong parental controls with a kid-friendly AI chatbot.

Unlike the real thing, the Pinwheel includes a camera, with the company promising that video calling will be coming later this year …

We already knew that Apple’s fiscal Q4 (calendar Q3) quarter set a new revenue record, but were lacking some details. A new report says that the income reflected record iPhone shipments, and the highest ever average selling price (ASP) achieved for the iPhone line-up.

Counterpoint Research shared the data from its latest Market Monitor report …

Dell was mocked at its own press launch for copying Apple’s iPhone naming convention for its PCs. Both laptop and desktop PCs are now divided into three tiers, whose names are taken straight from the iPhone line-up: Dell, Dell Pro, and Dell Pro Max.

Despite claiming it did this purely for simplicity, and not to copy Apple, Dell actually managed to make its PC line-up even less comprehensible than before …

Smart home company Aqara has announced no fewer than nine new products at this year’s consumer electronics show. Most, however, won’t be available in the US until later in the year.

These include a large touch-screen panel which performs multiple duties as a smart light switch, a controller and display for other smart home devices, a Zigbee hub, and a Matter bridge for Aqara Zigbee devices …

We may still be mostly waiting for a smarter Siri, but OpenAI CEO Sam Altman thinks the company already knows how to create the holy grail of AI: artificial general intelligence (AGI).

AGI is the term given to an AI system which can match or exceed human cognitive capabilities across a wide range of fields – in other words, AI which is at least as smart as we are …

We may be just a few days into 2025, but Apple thinks it can already tell which upcoming music artists are set to make a breakthrough this year. The company shared its predictions as the Shazam Fast Forward 2025.

Apple looked at the trending artists in the first five days of music Shazammed by users, and had its own music editors review them …

Ensuring HomeKit compatibility for smart home products is now very much easier to achieve. Apple has agreed to accept Matter certification for all new devices, without requiring additional testing before granting the Works With Apple Home badge.

Although it was always the goal that Matter support meant automatic compatibility with HomeKit, Google Home, Alexa, and Samsung Smart Things, there was previously a difference between theory and practice …

Lutron has earned a reputation for high-quality HomeKit-compatible window blinds, but with a very hefty price tag. The cost is something the company is seeking to address with the new Caséta Smart Shade.

Lutron says that you can expect the quality and performance it is known for, but at a more affordable price tag of $399 for most window sizes …