This is Rumor Replay, a weekly column at 9to5Mac offering a quick rundown of the most recent Apple product rumors, with analysis and commentary. Today: new iPads are on the way, plus a curious iOS Invites app, and more. Here are this week’s Apple rumors.

OhSnap, a company behind many cases and MagSafe accessories, just unveiled MCON at CES 2025. It’s a new slim accessory that slaps on the back of your iPhone, then folds out to unveil a fully featured game controller, making it incredibly easy to play games on the go.

Apple’s best-selling Mac, the MacBook Air, is getting upgraded soon—possibly as the first Apple product launch of 2025. Here are four new features coming to the M4 MacBook Air when it arrives.

Benjamin and Chance talk about the current ongoing controversies with Apple Intelligence notification summaries and the reaction to the settlement of the Siri privacy lawsuit, and how Apple is managing the negative PR. LG announces a new 6K display, but does it actually exist? And Benjamin is thrilled to hear that Apple News+ Puzzles may finally be coming to the UK.

And in Happy Hour Plus, we appreciate the seamless integration of iPhone, AirPods and Watch in the current cold winter months. Subscribe at 9to5mac.com/join.

• Sponsored by Oracle: Learn how to cut your cloud bill in half at oracle.com/HAPPYHOUR.

In a promotional push to boost interest for the upcoming second season, Apple has added all of Severance season one to the Roku Channel, for users to watch for free. The Roku Channel boasts more than 90 million users, making it one of the largest destinations of free streaming video content.

This marks the first time TV+ content has been made available on a free third-party streaming platform. The move shows just how committed Apple is to trying to expand engagement and viewership of its original content.

Ever wish you could rearrange or delete apps from CarPlay? It turns out you can, although it works differently than rearranging your iPhone Home screen.

The trick is in the Settings app on iPhone. Just don’t try to do this while driving. You don’t even need to be connected to CarPlay for it to work.

All of the best and most interesting to new gear from CES 2025 is being collected for you right here. The latest in smart home advancements and display tech to the suite of AI features seemingly getting injected into just about all of it, and everything in between, we will be rounding up the most intriguing new reveals and prototypes as well as products you’ll actually be able to get your hands-on this year down below.

Tim Cook says that he uses his Vision Pro every day. And in multiple interviews this past year, he’s mentioned a specific habit with the product that’s a big part of his use: lying down. After following his lead, I can now report that this method can (almost) fix the Vision Pro’s biggest problem.

Joining AirTag 4-packs and select Apple Watch Ultra configs back at the holiday pricing, today’s deals are headlined by just about every configuration of M3 MacBook Air at $200 off the going rate and $400 under the price they fetched before Apple upgraded to 16GB of RAM – pricing starts from $899. We also have open-box Apple Watch Series 10 models at up to $112 off to deliver some of the lowest prices all-time low alongside nearly 40% off one of the nicest leather bands in the game, Apple Watch chargers, and much more in today’s 9to5Toys Lunch Break. 

At CES 2025, announced a vast array of new products, including new Thunderbolt 5 docking stations, and a new 6-port 500W desktop charging hub. All of these products will be available in the coming months.

Listen to a recap of the top stories of the day from 9to5Mac. 9to5Mac Daily is available on iTunes and Apple’s Podcasts app, Stitcher, TuneIn, Google Play, or through our dedicated RSS feed for Overcast and other podcast players.

Sponsored by FastMinder: Simple, easy to use fasting tracker for iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. Get started today for free. 

Apple occasionally updates the App Store’s layout to make it easier to navigate, or emphasize one content section or another. But new changes recently rolled out that are especially prominent, and make new app discovery easier than ever on iPhone and more.

What do ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini all have in common? Dedicated apps on iPhone. Meanwhile, Grok has been shoehorned into the social media app before now. Starting today, the standalone Grok AI app is available on the iPhone and iPad for US users for the first time. More regions will be added as the rollout scales.

This spring, Apple is planning to launch a major iPhone SE 4 upgrade, and that new model will introduce a glaring problem for the iPhone lineup. Apple will likely sell two iPhones—15 and 14—at higher prices than the new SE, despite them being worse products in almost every way.

From 4GB storage to 1024GB, the iPhone has had an incredible run that isn’t slowing down, and it all started on this day in 2007. Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone to the world for the first time 18 years ago today.

Apple also opened pre-orders for the original Apple TV after Jobs revealed what was originally called iTV in September 2006. See both keynotes and press releases below:

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 …

At CES 2025, Satechi has unveiled the SM3 Slim Mechanical Backlit Bluetooth Keyboard, a sleek, low-profile mechanical keyboard built with Mac users in mind. It’s Satechi’s first full-size mechanical keyboard, and it’s designed to balance style, functionality, and comfort — perfect for those who want the mechanical typing experience without the bulk.

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 …