TIME100 Most Influential Companies 2025: Partiful
Partiful's app brings event planning into the social media age. Hosts can poll guests to choose an ideal time, collect RSVPs, and attendees can DM each other, share party pics and more. It's reached success with party planners in their 20s and 30s setting up everything from weddings to casual events like birthdays. Partiful's user activity rose by 600% in 2024, boosted in part by the buzz around powering a Timothée Chalamet lookalike contest in New York in October that the Oscar-nominated actor himself showed up for. It added over 2 million new users in the first quarter of 2025, and grew globally as well, reaching users in over 100 countries. In February, Apple launched its own version of an event app in an apparent bid to compete. Partiful CEO and co-founder Shreya Murthy thinks the simple evite app's success shows that young people care about keeping the dying art of human contact alive. 'It's easier than ever these days to be fully entertained and even feel a sense of social connection through your phone. But we've realized that so much of that is empty calories,' she says. 'What Partiful does is try to make it as frictionless as possible to gather people in the real world.'
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Tom's Guide
31 minutes ago
- Tom's Guide
iOS 26 has 5 killer upgrades I can't wait to use — but only these iPhones will get them
Like any iOS update, iOS 26 promises some exciting additions for your current iPhone. But before you get carried away about the new capabilities that are just an upgrade away, be sure to check out the fine print — because not every iOS addition works on every supported iPhone. Even if you've got an iPhone capable of running iOS 26, not all of those features are going to work on your device. Some require specific hardware, either because of processor demands or their reliance on on-device artificial intelligence. To be fair, the more significant changes ushered in by iOS 26 will work just fine no matter how hold your iPhone is. The Liquid Glass interface introduced with this update will be visible on every iPhone that upgrades to iOS 26, and changes like the new Games app, Messages enhancements and improvements to Maps work on all compatible phones. But there are some notable iOS 26 additions that have a more limited reach. And in most cases, it's because they rely on Apple Intelligence, Apple's take on AI, which means you'll need an iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max or any iPhone 16 model to reap the full benefits. (You can also pick up a iPhone 17 model in the fall, as those will support Apple Intelligence, too.) That doesn't mean you have to rush out and upgrade your iPhone now — there will be time enough to do that once the new models arrive this fall and you weigh the merits of getting a new device. But if you are planning on trying out iOS 26 — either as part of the public beta that arrives in July or the full release in the fall — you should be aware of what features your phone can and can't take advantage of. These are the iOS 26 additions that grabbed my attention, which will only work on select devices. Every iPhone will continue to offer low-power mode, which cuts back on refreshes for apps running in the background and dims display brightness, all in the name of preserving power. But if you have an Apple Intelligence-capable iPhone, iOS 26 introduces an adaptive power mode feature that's meant to improve battery life further. Get instant access to breaking news, the hottest reviews, great deals and helpful tips. Apple has said adaptive power mode will make performance adjustments on your phone — adjusting screen brightness, slowing down more background activities, and generally allowing your iPhone to last longer in between charges. It's a setting you'll enable, and it apparently kicks in when you're using your phone for power-hungry tasks. On-device AI is responsible for making these adjustments to power consumption — hence the need for an Apple Intelligence-compatible iPhone to reap the benefits of adaptive power mode. It should't be a shock that any new addition to Visual Intelligence requires an iPhone 15 Pro or later. After all, Visual Intelligence already only worked on select devices — first with iPhone 16 models exclusively and later with the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max after the iOS 18.4 update. Still, it's worth calling out iOS 26's Visual Intelligence improvements as they're rather significant. Previously, Visual Intelligence relied on your iPhone's camera to look up information or create calendar entries when you photographed posters and fliers with dates and times. In iOS 26, those same tools will be available for screenshots, essentially allowing you to search visually interesting items you come across with just a tap. You'll also be able to auto-create calendar events from emails, websites and text messages through Visual Intelligence in iOS 26 — but again, only if you have a more recent iPhone. Other than Liquid Glass, support for real-time translations feels like the most sweeping addition to iOS 26. That's because it touches on a number of apps and activities on the phone, from phone calls to video chats to text messages. Live Translations also happens to rely on on-device AI, so you'll once again need an iPhone 15 Pro or later to make it work. Phones aren't the only restriction to this iOS 26 feature. Live Translations will only offer support for select languages initially. Messages will work with simplified Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish. French, Portuguese and Spanish support will reflect the languages spoken in France, Brazil and Spain, respectively. As for the Phone and FaceTime apps, they'll support Live Translation for English, French, German, Portuguese and Spanish out of the gate. At last — an iOS 26 app that isn't just limited to devices that support Apple Intelligence. However, you will need at least an iPhone 12 if you want to take advantage of the Spatial Scenes feature to give your Lock Screen photo a 3D effect. That doesn't leave too many iPhones out in the cold. The iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 Pro Max won't be able to feature that 3D effect. I'd assume the iPhone SE (2020) won't be able to, either, since it has the same A13 Bionic chip as those phones. Spatial Scenes is built on the same technology used to create 3D effects in Apple's visionOS, and you'll also be able to apply it to images in the Photos app. Presumably, the same device restrictions apply there, too. I use the Reminders task every day to stay on top of tasks and to buzz me with notifications when I've got to take care of a to-do at a specific time. So naturally, any new feature coming to that app will pique my interest. Reminders isn't getting a big makeover with iOS 26, but it will gain one significant capability — at least if you've got a phone that can run Apple Intelligence. Apple's on-device AI will be able to use emails, texts and other things stored on your device to suggest tasks, follow-ups and grocery list items. Say my wife messages me to pick up some bread at the store. iOS 26 Reminders will be able to recognize that request and suggesting adding it to the grocery list I keep in the app — provided I'm using an iPhone 15 Pro or later by then. Some iOS 26 features aren't limited to newer devices, but they do have other restrictions that may affect your ability to use them. The most common restriction involves supported languages. Screening tools are a big marquee addition in iOS 26 that aim to cut down on the number of robocalls you answer and spam texts that find their way into Messages. In the Phone app, call screening will answer the phone for you and find out why that person is calling, while Messages will filter out texts from unknown senders into their own separate tab. But both of those features are only supporting English, Cantonese, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin Chinese, Portuguese and Spanish initially. Hold Assist, another Phone addition that pings you when it detects you're about to be taken off of hold, has language restrictions, too. It will work with English, French, German, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Portugues and Spanish. The Music app is getting a Lyrics Translation feature for select songs. That will work with English to Chinese, English to Japanese, Korean to Chinese, Korean to English, Korean to Japanese and Spanish to English. Meanwhile, a Live Captions accessibility tool works with Cantonese, English, French, Germa, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin Chinese and Spanish. Notably, the French and Spanish support in Live Captions includes the versions spoken in Canada and Mexico, respectively. Other iOS 26 features are limited to specific countries. It's probably not surprising that the ability to create a digital ID with your U.S. passport in Wallet will only be offered in the U.S., for example, but the Visited Places feature in Maps that logs where you go is launching in Australia, Canada, Malaysia, Switzerland, the U.K. and the U.S., initially.
Digital Trends
2 hours ago
- Digital Trends
This movie will race to box office glory this weekend. Watch the trailer here
There's only going to be one winner at the domestic box office this weekend — F1: The Movie. You can watch the trailer above. Landing in U.S. theaters today, the Apple-produced movie about a Formula One driver (Brad Pitt) coming out of retirement to mentor a younger driver, is forecast to rake in between $45 million and $55 million across the weekend, according to Box Office Pro. 'Warner Bros. and Apple's Formula One epic F1 has director Joseph Kosinski and producer Jerry Bruckheimer clearly racing to emulate the success of their 2022 smash Top Gun: Maverick,' Box Office Pro said, adding that the movie will get an extra boost from Formula One fans during the Austrian Grand Prix this weekend. IMDb currently has the $200-million-budget movie rated at 7.9/10 from 8,000 votes, while Rotten Tomatoes is showing an astonishingly positive 98% from more than 500 verified ratings. Reviews for F1: The Movie have been mostly favorable. NPR described it as 'slick, precision-tooled entertainment,' as well as 'hugely enjoyable and dazzlingly well-made.' praised the movie's 'sublime excitement … dynamic score … elegant editing,' though added that while F1 is 'certainly an expertly crafted crowd pleaser, Pitt can't match Cruise's enviable ability to conjoin his star persona with the emotions of the movie. Instead, the rarely transportative F1 is all cold and machinelike.' IndieWire called it a 'solid summer blockbuster' while IGN said: 'For 125 or so of its 156 minutes, F1 is every bit the experienced veteran. In its weaker moments though, it reverts to brash-rookie mode.' In its 4/5 review, Empire said the scenes outside of the race sequences 'verge on formulaic,' but added that overall, the 'magnitude of what Kosinski and co have accomplished is undeniable.' It's worth paying attention to reviews by motoring outlets, too. Road and Track, for example, said that while F1: The Movie is entertaining, 'hardcore racing fans will notice plenty of problems that risk breaking their immersion early and often.' F1: The Movie is a major bet for Apple as it seeks to deliver its first true big-screen hit to justify its high-end content strategy, with a success potentially giving it a foothold in theatrical distribution.
New York Times
3 hours ago
- New York Times
Your Phone Is Stolen. Your Laptop Gets Lost. Here's What to Do.
Miguel Porlan for NYT Wirecutter By Dave Gershgorn Dave Gershgorn is a writer covering monitors, laptops, and tablets. He is a certified display calibrator through the Imaging Science Foundation. Updated June 26, 2025 On a humid August night in Ferguson, Missouri, about 10 years ago, my phone was stolen. I was working as a photojournalist covering the protests against Michael Brown's killing, and amidst the bustle of the packed street, my phone was snatched out of my lap. I chased after the thief, but as we made a turn off the boulevard, and the streetlights grew sparse, I gave up. My phone was gone. That had never happened to me before, and I felt completely lost. I was far from my home in New York, I had no way to communicate with my family and friends and no way to get up-to-date information about what was happening around me, and I didn't have my saved travel plans or airline ticket home — or even any music. And suddenly all of that information was in someone else's hands. After I returned home, I bought a new phone and set it up from scratch. I still had my photos and contact data saved in Apple's iCloud, but to this day, I don't know everything I might have lost. A decade later, it's much easier to recover a phone — and all the personal information on it. Apple, Google, and Microsoft have each built location-tracking services, which allow you to track your device's last known location on a map in real time. Google added an AI-powered feature to Android phones that is designed to detect when your device has been snatched and locks the phone screen to make it harder for a thief to access your data. Although these tools give you options if your device is stolen, they don't ensure that your data is completely protected. Dave Lewis, global chief information security officer at identity security company 1Password, told Wirecutter that the average criminal might not be able to circumvent facial recognition or a fingerprint reader and will most likely flip the device to someone else for parts. 'But for an attacker with any sort of technical savvy, if they have physical access to the device, it's game over,' Lewis said. Today, I would do things differently, taking a few steps before my device is stolen as well as after. This is what I'd do. Explore all articles 1. Enable your device's Find My device-tracking tool. Finding your phone is easier if you have its Find My location-tracking feature enabled. Apple, Google, and Microsoft all have versions of this tool, which allows you to locate your device on a map, display a message on its lock screen, or play a sound on it remotely so that you can try to find it if it's nearby. We also recommend turning on a feature in iOS called Stolen Device Protection, which requires the person unlocking your phone to verify their identity with Face ID or Touch ID, wait an hour, and then verify again before being able to change sensitive information such as account passwords. Google has made a similar feature, called Identity Check, available for some Android phones. 2. Set your device to automatically create backups. Unless the phone's data is backed up, security experts told us that it's nearly impossible for the average person to retrieve information from their phone once it's already lost or stolen. If your phone is lost or stolen, you'll still be able to access data on Instagram or even your to-do list app, since most apps store information in the cloud and send it to your phone when you need it. But all the little things that make your phone yours, such as your settings and backgrounds, the way you arrange your apps, and anything you might have saved locally in your Files app, can be saved only if you've backed them up beforehand. Both iOS and Android let you schedule regular automatic backups of all your apps and settings, which is absolutely essential. If you have a recent copy of your backup and don't need any of the information on the phone, you can remotely wipe all the data off it without losing too much. Otherwise, you're stuck trying to find and recover your phone. 3. Encrypt and back up your laptop. It can be particularly challenging to recover data from a stolen or lost laptop, since you're far more likely to have saved files to its hard drive rather than storing them in the cloud. By encrypting your hard drive, which is an option in both macOS and Windows, you can prevent attackers from extracting that data with their own tools if they don't have your password. We also recommend backing up your important files to an external hard drive that you store in a safe location, so you can recover your photos and documents even if your laptop is gone for good. 4. Use a password manager. A password manager is an essential service that we recommend to improve your online security. (We recommend 1Password or Bitwarden.) It works by creating and autofilling unique passwords for all of your accounts, and in turn you need to remember and safeguard only the master password to the password manager. Your data stays encrypted until the master password is entered, and you can deauthorize the device if it's stolen or lost to remove the potential of your passwords being accessed altogether. 5. Turn off message previews and lock Control Center access. If anyone looking at your phone can see messages as they pop up, that means thieves can also see two-factor authentication codes. That gives the thief an opportunity to crack into any accounts that send you a code when you log in. iOS and Android both give you the ability to hide message previews until your phone recognizes your face. (If you mark your phone as lost in the Find My feature, that automatically turns off message previews remotely.) You can also turn off certain features of the lock screen, such as the Control Center, which gives quick access to Wi-Fi and other settings, until the phone has been unlocked by facial recognition. Share this article with a friend. Prevention, as they say, is the best cure, but life doesn't always unfold so neatly. If your phone, tablet, or laptop gets lost or stolen right this moment, don't panic. Here are the things you should do. 1. If your device was stolen, report the theft. Immediately after your device is taken, report it stolen to the police. If the missing device is a phone, report it to your cell carrier. Many carriers require you to give a previously established PIN to verify your identity and will then freeze your number (for more details, see information from AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon) until you add a new phone. The carrier will then block the old phone's unique serial number from connecting to its network. 2. Remotely lock down the device. If you enabled the Find My feature prior to the loss or theft, both Apple and Google give you options to remotely lock down your device. For an iPhone, you can visit Find Devices and mark the item as lost. For an Android phone, navigate to the Secure device setting in Google's location-tracking tool. Locking down the device makes it harder for thieves to access your Google account, pay using saved cards, or see alerts. 3. Revoke access to apps and remove multi-factor authentication. If a thief has your phone and is able to unlock it somehow, you should limit their ability to receive one-time passwords for your bank, for instance, or use applications that are permanently logged in. We recommend removing your phone as a multi-factor authentication device if you haven't turned off message previews as recommended above, if you have an easy-to-guess password, or if your cell phone line isn't frozen yet. Ronnie Manning, chief brand advocate for security key maker Yubico, separately recommends making a list of your most sensitive accounts, such as Google or Facebook accounts that you use to log in to other accounts, and then revoke your device from those accounts if it's stolen. You can usually find these settings under names like 'Account Access' or 'Security.' 4. Erase the device. With the Find My feature enabled before loss or theft, both Apple and Google will allow you to wipe data such as apps and photos from your stolen or lost phone while still being able to track it. Note that you should only wipe the device's data using the Find My feature, not fully remove the device from your Apple or Google account — that would allow the thief to set it up as new. Now, it's time to get a new phone or laptop. Luckily, we have some recommendations. This article was edited by Caitlin McGarry and Jason Chen.
