“We’re aware of reports that access to Signal has been blocked in some countries,” Signal says. If you are affected by the blocks, the company recommends turning on its censorship circumvention feature. (NetBlocks reports that this feature lets Signal “remain usable” in Russia.)

The achievement, announced in an official blog post, indicates a potential shift in the American messaging landscape, where WhatsApp has steadily gained ground despite the longstanding popularity of Apple's iMessage. The Meta-owned messaging app is extremely popular in Europe owing to its cross-platform compatibility.

NEW: Apple Intelligence will arrive later than anticipated, coming in iOS 18.1 and iPadOS 18.1 in October and missing the initial September releases. Still, 18.1 will go into beta for developers this week. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-07-28/apple-intelligence-to-miss-initial-release-of-upcoming-ios-18-ipados-overhauls?embedded-checkout=true

https://mastodon.social/@markgurman/112865597192330044

The ChatGPT app for Mac is now available to all users, OpenAI announced today. The app first came out in mid-May, but it saw a slow rollout that was limited to ChatGPT Plus subscribers until now.

In Mark Gurman's latest report he claims Apple is "considering" making the upcoming non-Pro Vision headset "reliant on a tethered Mac or iPhone". […] But at closer inspection, there are a number of reasons this probably couldn't work, and it's simply a bad idea even if it could. […]

The real issue is that devices without a cooling fan like smartphones cannot sustain their peak performance for more than a few dozen minutes at the absolute most. […]

Even if this problem could be magically solved by some future cooling system, an iPhone's battery is three times smaller than the battery attached to Apple Vision Pro, which weighs almost twice as much as an iPhone.

With Apple Vision Pro however, temperature doesn't seem to be the only factor in fan speeds. According to Max Thomas (aka Shiny Quagsire), the main developer of the visionOS port of the SteamVR streaming tool ALVR, the headset also sets the maximum fan speed based on how loud the fans are, measured with the headset's microphone array.

The idea is presumably that in louder environments, those with more ambient noise, the fans will be harder to hear. So the overall goal of ensuring you rarely hear any fans can be maintained while maximizing performance.

This all leads to the bizarre conclusion that Apple Vision Pro should perform better in noisy environments […].

Due to the regulatory uncertainties brought about by the Digital Markets Act, we do not believe that we will be able to roll out three of these [new] features -- iPhone Mirroring, SharePlay Screen Sharing enhancements, and Apple Intelligence -- to our EU users this year.

Are you using the VP enough to still justify the price tag?

What upgrades/changes would a 2. gen need for you to consider getting it?

Apple is offering discounts of up to 2,300 yuan ($318) on select models. […] Apple has become dependent on discounts to shift ‌mid-cycle ‌iPhone 15‌‌ stock, with strong competition from Huawei's latest high-end series of Pura 70 phones said to be partly behind the most recent drop in sales.