Apple WWDC didn't change my thesis on the stock, says MoffettNathanson's Craig Moffett
Craig Moffett, MoffettNathanson partner and senior analyst, joins 'Power Lunch' to discuss Moffett's thoughts on Apple's WWDC.
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Still no AI-powered, 'more personalized' Siri from Apple at WWDC 25
At this year's Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC 25), Apple announced a slew of updates to its operating systems, services, and software, including a new look it dubbed "Liquid Glass" and a rebranded naming convention. Apple was notably quiet on one highly anticipated product: a more personalized, AI-powered Siri, which it first introduced at last year's conference. Apple's SVP of Software Engineering, Craig Federighi, only gave the Siri update a brief mention during the keynote address, saying, "As we've shared, we're continuing our work to deliver the features that make Siri even more personal. This work needed more time to reach our high-quality bar, and we look forward to sharing more about it in the coming year." The time frame of "coming year" seems to indicate that Apple won't have news before 2026. That's a significant delay in the AI era, where new models, updates, and upgrades ship at a rapid pace. First announced at WWDC 24, the more personalized Siri is expected to bring artificial intelligence updates to the beleaguered virtual assistant built into iPhone and other Apple devices. At the time, the company hyped it as the "next big step for Apple" and said Siri would be able to understand your "personal context," like your relationships, communications, routine, and more, Plus, the assistant was going to be more useful by allowing you to take action within and across your apps. While Bloomberg reported that the in-development version of the more personalized Siri was functional, it was not consistently working properly. The report said its quality issues meant Siri only performed as it should two-thirds of the time, making it not viable to ship. Apple officially announced in March it was pushing back the launch, saying the Siri update would take longer to deliver than anticipated. The company also pulled SVP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy John Giannandrea off the Siri project and put Mike Rockwell, who had worked on the Vision Pro, in charge. The shake-up indicated the company was trying to get back on track after stumbling on a major release. It also suggested Apple's AI technology was behind that of rivals, like OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic, worrying investors. In the meantime, Apple partnered with OpenAI to help close the gap; when users asked Siri questions the assistant couldn't answer, those could be directed to ChatGPT instead. With the upcoming release, iOS 26, Apple has updated its AI image generation app, Image Playground, to use ChatGPT as well. At this year's WWDC 2025, the company continued to make other AI promises, including developer access to the on-device foundation models, live translation, upgrades to Genmoji (in addition to aforementioned Image Playground), Visual Intelligence improvements, an AI "Workout Buddy" for Apple Watch, AI in Xcode, and the introduction of an updated, AI-powered version of its Shortcuts app for scripting and automation. This article originally appeared on TechCrunch at
CNET
30 minutes ago
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The Back of Your iPhone Has a Secret Button -- Here's What It Can Do
We're a few months out from the release of iOS 26, which will introduce a whole new look to the iPhone. But what if you're still holding on to an older iPhone that won't get the Liquid Glass redesign or Apple Intelligence for screenshots? What if you're itching to try out something new like the Camera Control button on the latest models? Good news: There's a hidden feature that lets you quickly activate your iPhone camera without unlocking your device or touching the screen, and it works on some fairly old devices. All you need to do is set up the secret "button" on the back of your iPhone. WWDC 2025: Everything Revealed in 10 Minutes WWDC 2025: Everything Revealed in 10 Minutes Click to unmute Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Skip Backward Skip Forward Next playlist item Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration 9:37 Loaded : 6.19% 0:00 Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 9:37 Share Fullscreen This is a modal window. 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WWDC 2025: Everything Revealed in 10 Minutes You can use this feature to not only launch your camera app, but also turn on your flashlight or activate Shazam to identify a song before it ends. You can summon your iPhone's Control Center or Notification Center without having to swipe down from the top of your screen. In fact, with a little bit of imagination, you can use this feature to perform almost any of your phone's functions. The feature is called Back Tap, and like the Action Button on newer iPhones, it gives you one more way to interact with your device without touching the screen. You can activate it by tapping anywhere on the back of your phone, including on the camera module. And the best part is that it works even if you have a fairly thick case on your iPhone. Back Tap is available on iPhones as old as iPhone 8, as long as they're running iOS 14 or later. We'll show you how to enable it and how to use it with your Shortcuts app for nearly endless possibilities. Read more: All the Ways the iPhone 16's Camera Control Button Will Change Your iPhone Photography What is the iPhone Back Tap feature? Back Tap is an iPhone feature introduced in iOS 14. It lets you perform shortcuts on your iPhone by double or triple tapping on the back of the device. You can customize Back Tap on your iPhone to easily perform common actions like pulling up the Control Center or Notification Center, especially useful if you have a larger phone and can't swipe down from the top of the screen without some complex finger gymnastics. You can even have two separate functions enabled at the same time: Back Tap can distinguish between a Double Tap and a Triple Tap. Depending on the number of times you touch the back of your iPhone, you can set Double Tap to open your Notification Center and Triple Tap to take a screenshot. Or, you can make Double Tap open the Control Center and Triple Tap launch the Magnifier app. Experiment with Back Tap to find the right combinations of taps and functions that best fit your needs. And you aren't just limited to the Back Tap options that are available by default. Thanks to the Shortcuts app, you can set up Back Tap to perform specific functions or launch any app. For example, you can create a simple shortcut that opens Shazam or starts a voice recording, then activate it with a quick Double Tap or Triple Tap. You can also use Back Tap to trigger a more elaborate shortcut, such as automatically sending photos and videos to specific photo albums. How do I set up Back Tap on my iPhone? To enable Back Tap, go to your Settings app. Then go to Accessibility → Touch → Back Tap. There, you'll find a list of options for configuring Double Tap and Triple Tap. Here is the full list of functions that you can map to a Double Tap or Triple Tap: None Accessibility Shortcut System App Switcher Camera Control Center Flashlight Home Lock Rotation Lock Screen Mute Notification Center Reachability Screenshot Shake Spotlight Volume Down Volume Up Accessibility AssistiveTouch Background Sounds Classic Invert Color Filters Control Nearby Devices Dim Flashing Lights Live Captions Live Speech Magnifier Smart Invert Speak Screen VoiceOver Zoom Zoom Controller Scroll Gestures Scroll Down Scroll Up At the bottom of the menu, you'll also see a list of Shortcuts. These options will vary depending on what's available in your Shortcuts app. The one potential downside to Back Tap is that you don't get any tactile feedback when you use it, so you might accidentally trigger it at the wrong time and not realize it until later. For instance, you might double tap without meaning to and set off your flashlight by accident. In that case, you might want to remap your Double Tap to a less conspicuous function. Or, you can leave Double Tap off and only use Triple Tap, which you probably won't trigger as often. How do I use Back Tap to take a quick photo? One way to set up Back Tap is to map Double Tap to the Camera and Triple Tap to Volume Up or Volume Down. Because you can press either of the volume buttons to instantly take a picture, you can get the same effect if your volume buttons are mapped to Back Tap. With this combination, you can capture a photo with five quick taps on the back of your iPhone (though you'll have to pause briefly between performing the Double Tap and Triple Tap, so that your phone can distinguish between the two actions). This Back Tap combination even works if your phone is locked. Again, spend some time trying out different combinations of taps and features to find which ones are most useful for you.
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31 minutes ago
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Excited for iOS 26? What You Should Know Before Installing the Developer Version
iOS 26 is official and there's a lot to get excited for. With its unveiling today at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference, a new developer beta will soon be available to install for, well, developers, but also anyone else willing to take the plunge into potential unstable territory. iOS 26 brings a brand new Liquid Glass design language to your iPhone, offering up a slick user interface that will be consistent with the rest of Apple's software and that was inspired by the VisionOS software for the Vision Pro headset. And that's on top of all of the visual enhancements that we got in iOS 18, last year's release. (Apple is bypassing 19, jumping directly from 18 to 26 in its numbering system.) While some enthusiasts will be unfazed by the warnings, we'll go over what you can expect if you opt to install the new iOS 26 developer beta on your iPhone. For more, catch up on all of the new announcements at WWDC 2025. There's nothing stable about the 'Developer beta' builds The polished iOS that Apple showed off on stage at its WWDC keynote today was not the same as what's now available in the developer build being released today. The developer build will, undoubtedly, ship with bugs. That's both expected and fine, for one reason. Developer betas are just that -- builds for developers to test their apps for compatibility -- and far from something an end user would be able to live with on a day-to-day basis. That's also why Apple breaks its betas into developer builds and public beta builds -- the latter of which will be more usable for everyday folk. Exactly what could be broken in the beta build is anyone's guess. Last year, the iOS 18 Developer Preview had several issues, including certain apps refusing to open or force-closing, notifications not showing up, and other general issues that can significantly put a damper on the entire phone experience. Once we get our hands on the latest build, we'll do the dirty work for you, so you don't have you plan on installing the developer beta anyway, you can check out our guide when the update drops. If you're going to install the developer beta, make a backup first If you decide to install the developer beta, there's a chance that a bug or performance issue will significantly impair your ability to use your phone, and you might have to wait until the next beta release for fixes. If you run into a situation like this, you'll probably just want to go back to iOS 18 until the public beta arrives -- and if you don't want to make that walk back an arduous mission, you should just do yourself a favor and make a backup of your iPhone before installing the developer beta. Be warned that the best route to back up your iPhone might be iCloud and not your computer. While it should technically work, some bugs in the iOS 18 beta prevented their iPhones from being recognized on their computers, so some who made a backup via this method were unable to go back to a more stable version. That's what can happen with the developer betas: significant issues might have you starting from scratch. With that out of the way, here's how to make a backup on your iPhone via iCloud: Settings Tap your name Find and select your device from the list Select iCloud Backup Tap Back Up Now When to expect the iOS 26 public beta Now that you've been warned about what could happen with installing the developer beta, you might want to save yourself some stress by holding off for the public beta -- if you can weather the FOMO. You can expect the iOS 26 public bBeta to go live sometime in July. For more, check out what's new in iPadOS 26.
