In his Power On newsletter, Gurman said that Apple now plans to make the Image Playground feature for generating images and the Genmoji feature for generating custom emoji available in iOS 18.2, which will likely be released in December.
Here is how Apple describes Image Playground:
Produce fun, original images in seconds with the Image Playground experience right in your apps. Create an entirely new image based on a description, suggested concepts, and even a person from your Photos library. You can easily adjust the style and make changes to match a Messages thread, your Freeform board, or a slide in Keynote.
Here is how Apple describes Genmoji:
Make a brand-new Genmoji right in the keyboard to match any conversation. Provide a description to see a preview, and adjust your description until it's perfect. You can even pick someone from your Photos library and create a Genmoji that looks like them.
The first Apple Intelligence features will be available starting with iOS 18.1, which is likely to be released to the public in October. These features include new writing tools for generating and summarizing text, notification summaries, suggested replies in the Messages app, the ability to record and transcribe phone calls, a new "Clean Up" tool in the Photos app that can quickly remove objects from a photo, and a few others.
Apple Intelligence will require an iPhone 15 Pro or iPhone 15 Pro Max running iOS 18.1 or later. The features will initially be available with device language set to English only. Apple said more languages will follow over the next year.
Thursday February 5, 2026 12:54 pm PST by Joe Rossignol
Apple turns 50 this year, and its CEO Tim Cook has promised to celebrate the milestone. The big day falls on April 1, 2026.
"I've been unusually reflective lately about Apple because we have been working on what do we do to mark this moment," Cook told employees today, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. "When you really stop and pause and think about the last 50 years, it makes your heart ...
Thursday February 5, 2026 12:22 pm PST by Joe Rossignol
Apple plans to announce the iPhone 17e on Thursday, February 19, according to Macwelt, the German equivalent of Macworld.
The report, citing industry sources, is available in English on Macworld.
Apple announced the iPhone 16e on Wednesday, February 19 last year, so the iPhone 17e would be unveiled exactly one year later if this rumor is accurate. It is quite uncommon for Apple to unveil...
Friday February 6, 2026 3:06 pm PST by Juli Clover
In the iOS 26.4 update that's coming this spring, Apple will introduce a new version of Siri that's going to overhaul how we interact with the personal assistant and what it's able to do.
The iOS 26.4 version of Siri won't work like ChatGPT or Claude, but it will rely on large language models (LLMs) and has been updated from the ground up.
Upgraded Architecture
The next-generation...
Tuesday February 3, 2026 7:47 am PST by Joe Rossignol
While the iOS 26.3 Release Candidate is now available ahead of a public release, the first iOS 26.4 beta is likely still at least a week away. Following beta testing, iOS 26.4 will likely be released to the general public in March or April.
Below, we have recapped known or rumored iOS 26.3 and iOS 26.4 features so far.
iOS 26.3
iPhone to Android Transfer Tool
iOS 26.3 makes it easier...
The iPhone 18 Pro Max will feature a bigger battery for continued best-in-class battery life, according to a known Weibo leaker.
Citing supply chain information, the Weibo user known as "Digital Chat Station" said that the iPhone 18 Pro Max will have a battery capacity of 5,100 to 5,200 mAh. Combined with the efficiency improvements of the A20 Pro chip, made with TSMC's 2nm process, the...
This makes sense after the rollout of the Google tool and everyone realized there weren’t sufficient guardrails in place to prevent (or at least reduce) the likelihood of generating offensive content from the tool. They’d rather have it locked down up front as opposed to having to tweak it afterwards.
While fully sensitive to "offensive," who can be the judge of that? Artistic expression at its best has no boundaries. As someone decides to set boundaries, art is "pinched" down.
I have zero desire to be exposed to "offensive" images myself... but my definition of what is offensive will likely differ from yours which will differ from the next guy. Someone's "absolutely offensive" is someone else's cutting-edge, "amazing" art(istic expression).
Trusting a corporation to police it will be getting their definition of offensive... which seems likely to lean as far to the "safe" for any and all eyes as possible... which means pinching the boundaries much tighter than you or I or the other guy might pinch it. I don't believe that is best... even if in one read, it might seem so to many. There are people who can be offended over what will seem like (towards) nothing to the masses. Filter offensive for them (also Apple product buyers) and I suspect the frustration with the tool being too "tight" for the masses will be criticized for overdoing it... especially with other options available with standards not set so tight.
This makes sense after the rollout of the Google tool and everyone realized there weren’t sufficient guardrails in place to prevent (or at least reduce) the likelihood of generating offensive content from the tool. They’d rather have it locked down up front as opposed to having to tweak it afterwards.
Apple should cancel the whole AI thing. Most people don’t feel comfortable with the whole idea and it will cause more problems in every way possible. Fixing Bugs is way more important and adding easier features.
You are going to get left behind if you do not embrace AI.
I've been using Office 365's AI feature for a while. It's such a mixed bag and I'm left feeling I really don't think AI is the big breakthrough that people want it to be. It's very hard to describe why.
On the one hand, it can do amazing things, and is ideal for some narrow circumstances. Want the outline for a report? Word will create it instantly, tailored to your subject area. Ditto it can create presentations. In Excel it can create pivot tables and charts by analysing data for interesting tidbits. The main Copilot chat tool can search all your docs and chats to find when something was mentioned.
It's very impressive. But it's somehow not actually that useful.
The first problem is that we need features in apps to be cast iron reliable. And AI just isn't. It's pretty good. But it has a habit of letting the user down. It's like having a ********ting friend. You might enjoy being in their company, and you may love what they say. But at the end of the day, you're a fool if you trust or rely upon them.
The second issue is that in the rush to get the AI products to market, nobody has really understood what they are.
Computers until now have been do-it-with-me. Steve Jobs said a computer was like a bicycle for the mind, and this was perfect. A computer enhances human intelligence. You can do the same things but better, and faster.
AI is a different type of computing. It's do-it-for-me. To use the bicycle metaphor, the computer will now steer the bike. All you have to do is point it in the right direction and pump the pedals to make it move. Hmmm...
It's reducing the necessity of the human's abilities, but the human is still right there. This is the fundamental issue.
Computers work great when they do-it-with-us.
They're problematic when they do-it-for-us. Nobody has yet realised this and I suspect a bubble is about to burst.
I think a lot of people in the tech industry over-estimate how much the "typical" user cares about AI. No one I work with would care at all if an iPhone was marketed as an AI device.
