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iOS and iPadOS 18.3 Tweak Apple Intelligence and Add a Few Features

Starting them young. Source: Apple.

Starting them young. Source: Apple.

The drip, drip, drip of Apple Intelligence continues with iOS and iPadOS 18.3. There are still some big-ticket features announced at WWDC 2024 that are yet to come, but with today’s release, Apple keeps ticking items off its list.

The biggest change is one that is largely hidden from view. Starting with iOS and iPadOS 18.3, Apple Intelligence is turned on by default. That should result in greater adoption of the features, and it’s a good indicator that Apple is confident LLM hallucinations won’t come back to bite the company in its reputation. We’ll see about that last bit, but given the size of the iPhone market, Apple’s guardrails have held up reasonably well so far.

That said, Apple is walking back one feature a little. Notification summaries will no longer be applied to news apps, after some high-profile confabulations. Given that news apps typically send headlines, which are inherently summary in nature, I don’t think that’s a great loss, although the change is reportedly temporary. However, one change to notifications is not temporary: starting with iOS and iPadOS 18.3, summarized notifications appear in italics to help distinguish them from other notifications.

Visual Intelligence has been updated in iOS 18.3 as well. Accessed by pressing and holding the iPhone’s Camera Control, Visual Intelligence can now add events to your calendar, identify animals and plants, and get information about places around you, such as a store or restaurant’s hours.

The latest update also adds back a Calculator feature. When you tap the equals sign repeatedly, the Calculator app will apply the last-used operation each time.

Finally, Apple introduced its latest Black Unity Collection earlier today. The iPhone and iPad wallpapers are part of iOS and iPadOS 18.3, and the new Unity Rhythm watch face is included with watchOS 11.3.

DeepSeek Tops the App Store Charts and Sends AI Stocks on a Wild Ride

DeepSeek's newfound popularity has made it impossible to log in as of the publication of this story.

DeepSeek’s newfound popularity has made it impossible to log in as of the publication of this story.

And just like that, ChatGPT has been dethroned from its perch at the top of the App Store’s free app list, replaced by DeepSeek, another AI app. What’s interesting is that DeepSeek, which was developed by a Chinese startup, was reportedly created at a fraction of the cost of ChatGPT and other large language models developed in the US, which has tech stocks in turmoil.

Last week, DeepSeek revealed its latest LLM, which matches or outperforms OpenAI’s o1 model in some tests. That’s nothing new. AI companies have been one-upping each other for months. What’s different is that DeepSeek was reportedly built with a fraction of the hardware and at a fraction of the cost of OpenAI’s o1 and models like Anthropic’s Claude.

DeepSeek is also open source, potentially undermining the financial viability of U.S. and other for-profit companies that have spent hundreds of millions of dollars developing models that require a paid subscription. And, because it’s free, DeepSeek rocketed to the top of the App Store’s free app list, passing OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which has been at or near the top of the list for months.

That has caused a stir in Silicon Valley. As VentureBeat’s Carl Franzen puts it:

The open-source availability of DeepSeek-R1, its high performance, and the fact that it seemingly “came out of nowhere” to challenge the former leader of generative AI, has sent shockwaves throughout Silicon Valley and far beyond, based on my conversations with and readings of various engineers, thinkers and leaders. If not “everyone” is freaking out about it as my hyperbolic headline suggests, it’s certainly the talk of the town in tech and business circles.

Now, as DeepSeek is starting to look like the real deal, the stock market is causing competitors’ stocks to drop, including NVIDIA’s, which, according to the Financial Times, fell 13% at the opening of the New York Stock Exchange.

If there’s one thing that has been a truism of the AI industry over the past couple of years, it’s that it moves very fast. Today’s leaders are tomorrow’s laggards. Will DeepSeek dethrone the U.S. AI companies? It’s far too early to know, but it certainly is beginning to look like there’s a new horse in the race.

Apple Announces the 2025 Black Unity Collection

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

To honor Black History Month, which starts in February, Apple has released a new Black Unity Collection. Similar to 2024’s collection, the 2025 edition includes a Sport Loop band, iPhone and iPad wallpapers, and an Apple Watch face.

According to Apple’s press release:

Black creatives and allies at Apple collaborated on the design of the new collection. The collection, Unity Rhythm, weaves together the colors of the Pan-African flag: black, green, and red. The Black Unity Sport Loop is woven in a custom pattern of raised and recessed loops that creates a lenticular effect, revealing green on one side of each loop, and red on the other. When the band is worn, the colors appear dynamic, shifting from green to red as a user moves their wrist, and the color yellow appears in the transition, as if by magic.

The wallpapers spell the word “Unity,” which matches the pattern on the Watch face and colors of the Watch band. The Unity Rhythm watch face also includes a rhythmic chime on the hour and half-hour.

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Apple is also supporting several organizations with grants, including the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music in New Orleans, Battersea Arts Centre in London, Music Forward Foundation in Los Angeles, Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, and The National Museum of African American Music in Nashville, Tennessee.

The Apple Watch Black Unity Sport Loop is available to order online today and will be in stores this week for $49. The Unity Rhythm watch face and wallpapers will be available in a future software update.

Introducing Our Updated iPad Hub→

We’ve updated MacStories’ iPad hub. You may not have noticed before, but it’s linked right there in the masthead, and it’s an amazing resource. The iPad hub collects over a decade of Federico’s coverage of years of iPad hardware and iPadOS. It’s a fantastic historical resource and the best place to find his latest coverage.

Federico has been using and writing about the iPad since its beginning. His many hardware reviews benefit from that in-depth knowledge and his experiments in modularity and creating a hybrid laptop-tablet are legendary.

On the iPad hub, you’ll find:

If you love the iPad as much as we do, check out our iPad hub. It’s a fantastic resource and a fun trip through Apple’s hardware history.

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The Latest from Comfort Zone, Magic Rays of Light, and MacStories Unwind

Enjoy the latest episodes from MacStories’ family of podcasts:

Comfort Zone

Matt has an announcement to make (and a cool app to talk about), Chris brought a bag of goodies, and Niléane brought a fun challenge around using our mice in interesting ways.

Magic Rays of Light

Sigmund and Devon highlight the premiere of Apple Original thriller Prime Target, share their perspectives on the conversation surrounding dark scenes in shows and films, and recap the gripping second season of Silo.

MacStories Unwind

This week, a neighborhood explosion, oats, root vegetables, and coffee, plus a classic sitcom, a unique videogame, and an action-packed movie.

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Epic Games Announces iOS Store Expansion in the E.U.→

The Epic Games Store, which is available in the E.U. on iOS as a result of the Digital Markets Act and globally on Android, is expanding.

During a press briefing, Epic’s Tim Sweeney said:

Our aim here isn’t just to launch a bunch of different stores in different places, but to build a single, cross-platform store in which, within the era of multi-platform games, if you buy a game or digital items in one place, you have the ability to own them everywhere.

As part of the store expansion, The Verge’s Lauren Feiner reports that Epic will cover Apple’s E.U. Core Technology Fee charged on free games for the first 12 months. Epic will also offer monthly free games, and eventually, weekly freebies. The new games aren’t available just yet, but should be soon.

It’s good to see Epic expanding its offerings on iOS and Android. Alternative marketplaces have grown slowly in the E.U., but with Epic willing to reduce the financial risk of Apple’s Core Technology Fee, we should start seeing Epic’s store expand more rapidly.

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The Vision Pro Lends a Hand to the STRUTT ev¹ Personal Mobility Device→

YouTuber Two F Zero T has a first look at the STRUTT ev¹, a personal mobility device that was shown off at CES and can be controlled with the Vision Pro. The video, which I first saw linked by Apple’s Mike Stern on Mastodon, demonstrates the impressive tech packed into the STRUTT ev¹, including a unique integration with the Vision Pro. Thanks to Apple’s headset, users can navigate their surroundings with the Vision Pro’s eye and head tracking.

One of the things that’s easy to forget is that the Vision Pro builds on Apple’s years of accessibility research and development, which pioneered many of the interactions central to how people use it. With the release of the Vision Pro, developers working on new hardware like the STRUTT ev¹ can build on Apple’s innovation to offer an even richer feature set in their products. It’s a virtuous circle that benefits everyone. Apple’s products work better for more people, and companies like Strutt can build on that technology to offer an enhanced experience to their customers, too.

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The Latest from AppStories and Ruminate

Enjoy the latest episodes from MacStories’ family of podcasts:

AppStories

This week, Federico and John look ahead to WWDC and beyond to consider how Apple Intelligence could be used to change the way we use our iPhones, iPads, and Macs.

On AppStories+, Federico has grievances about the lack of Apple software compatibility on Android.

Ruminate

I brings the snack, Robb tries the BuJo life, and they both discuss web apps.

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Netflix Games Seemingly Narrows Its Focus→

I’ve followed Netflix Games’ journey closely for the last three years. The company has dipped its toe into a wide variety of genres but stood out for its deep catalog of artistic indie games, including recent additions like Monument Valley 3. However, based on an earnings call reported on by Neil Long of mobilegamer.biz, that may be changing.

According to Long, Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters said:

After three years of releasing a broad range of mobile titles, Netflix said it is now focusing on “a few key genres”, including narrative games based on its own IP, party games, kids games and “mainstream established titles (like Grand Theft Auto)”.

From that, it sure sounds like indie games are being squeezed out at Netflix Games, which has seen its fair share of upheaval recently. I hope not though. Having high-quality indie titles on my iPhone that are also available on my Ayn Odin Android portable console has been a delight.

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