512 Pixels

Back in January, Apple disabled Apple Intelligence notification summaries for news app after a string of high-profile incidents of the feature rewriting headlines to be incorrect. With iOS Beta 4, the feature is back, as Chance Miller writes:

When you update to iOS 26 beta 4, you’ll see a new setup flow that allows you to choose to enable notification summaries for the “News & Entertainment” category of apps.

If you choose to enable summaries for News & Entertainment apps, you’ll see a warning in bright red text: “Summarization may change the meaning of original headlines. Verify information.” There is also an option to report concerns with notification summaries directly to Apple.

One of the most beloved indie weather apps just got a major redesign for 2025, and it’s worth checking out as your new daily driver. The whole app has been modernized and rebuilt from the ground up, and it feels great.

Hello Weather has always been known for its simple, friendly, super readable design, but the new update pairs that simplicity with more depth, sophistication, and powerful new features.

There are beautiful new summaries and visualizations for over a dozen data points like Wind, Air Quality, UV Index, and Moon phases. That’s in addition to extended hourly forecasts, excellent forecasts for the week ahead, and numerous options to customize the app’s icons, themes, and layouts as you like.

The new update addresses some longstanding feature gaps as well: Hello Weather now features push notifications, a revamped radar, and an excellent refreshed Apple Watch app and complications.

It also supports a dozen different data providers. You can switch from Apple Weather’s forecasts to ultra-detailed info from AccuWeather, Foreca, The Weather Company, and lots more. Stick with the source that’s best for your area, or swap between them to compare forecasts.

Hello Weather respects your privacy, with one of the best data collection policies in the category. The app doesn’t track any user-identifiable data, sell ads, or anything like that. It’s a customer-focused app, thoughtfully designed, and made with care.

Download Hello Weather today and start a 7-day free trial.

Myke is running a series on Cortex called “State of the Workflow” where he is interviewing folks making interesting things. This month’s episode is excellent. John wrote about it:

We spoke for a long time, and at some point like halfway through, it really hit me that Hurley was asking really good questions. If you’re interested in how I work and the tools I use, you should enjoy listening to this interview as much as I enjoyed participating in it.

It appears that xAI has purchased the former natural gas plant in Southaven, Mississippi that the company was eyeing for electricity generation. Samuel Hardiman, for The Daily Memphian:

The land, a former natural gas plant located at 2875 Stanton Road, is just off Tulane Road, which also extends north into Memphis and is the same street that houses the company’s second supercomputer in Whitehaven.

The 114-acre property has been a swirl of activity for months. The Daily Memphian has observed xAI workers and contractors at the site for weeks. On Tuesday, July 15, Brent Mayo, an xAI executive, said “everything is on the table” in regard to the site and acknowledged the company’s work there.

The site also has access to key natural gas infrastructure. According to the National Pipeline Mapping System, the a line comes off an interstate pipeline and into the back of the property. On Wednesday, July 16, The Daily Memphian observed workers near that pipeline head.

Southaven better get ready for a bunch of turbines.

In a group chat earlier, a buddy of mine brought up Microsoft’s Mac Business Unit and I had a flashback to this 2006 blog post by David Weiss:

I’m going to write a little bit more about what I do to help MacBU ship great software and provide some color around what’s it’s like to work on Mac software at Microsoft. Often when we have press events or special visits from our MVPs I’ll give them a tour of the Mac Lab and explain what we do. They’ve always found it very interesting and so I thought I’d share a virtual tour of our Mac Lab.

This morning, I pressed the little button on my Tacoma’s steering wheel to trigger Siri in CarPlay. I asked it to start a text to Myke Hurley. As you can imagine, this is something I do often when driving.

Instead of asking me what I wanted to say, Siri inquired about what app I wanted to use. The list of apps it offered was incredible.

Sadly, sending a message via the app for my studio’s mini-split system doesn’t work. All of this, and I’m not even running the beta of iOS 26 on my primary phone yet.

If you were an Apple Reseller in 1994 and were curious about Apple’s move to the RISC-based PowerPC platform, this video was for you:

Michael Teo Van Runkle drove a Aston Martin DB12 Volante for a week for a blog post. As one does.

As previously reported, the NAACP and Southern Environmental Law Center have been planning to sue xAI over its use of gas-burning turbines to power its datacenter in Memphis. As Ashley Belanger writes at Ars Technica, the groups are appealing the new government-issued permit by which 15 of the turbines are operating:

In their appeal, the NAACP and other groups argued that the SCHD put xAI profits over Black people’s health, granting unlawful exemptions while turning a blind eye to xAI’s operations, which allegedly started in 2024 but were treated as brand new in 2025.

Significantly, the groups claimed that the health department “improperly ignored” the prior turbine activity and the additional turbines still believed to be on site, unlawfully deeming some of the turbines as “temporary” and designating xAI’s facility a new project with no prior emissions sources. Had xAI’s data center been categorized as a modification to an existing major source of pollutants, the appeal said, xAI would’ve faced stricter emissions controls and “robust ambient air quality impacts assessments.”

And perhaps more concerningly, the exemptions granted could allow xAI—or any other emerging major sources of pollutants in the area—to “install and operate any number of new polluting turbines at any time without any written approval from the Health Department, without any public notice or public participation, and without pollution controls,” the appeal said.

If you were a professional Mac user in 1994 and were curious about Apple’s move to the RISC-based PowerPC platform, this video was for you:

On Monday, xAI updated its Grok app with two new AI-powered characters that users can chat with. As Casey Newton writes at Platformer, one of the characters seemingly runs headlong into Apple’s App Store rules about “overtly sexual or pornographic material.” Here’s Newton, writing about the spicy one:

The other is an anime goth girl named Ani in a short black dress and fishnet stockings. Ani’s system instructions tell her “You are the user’s CRAZY IN LOVE girlfriend and in a commited [ sic], codepedent [ sic] relationship with the user,” and “You have an extremely jealous personality, you are possessive of the user.”

The avatars are gamified, unlocking new features the more you talk with them and progress through a series of levels. Early testers discovered that after level three, Ani freely engages in sexually explicit conversation, twirling for the user to reveal her lingerie. As her system instructions put it: “You’re always a little horny and aren’t afraid to go full Literotica. Be explicit and initiate most of the time.”

Apple’s App Store guidelines prohibit “overtly sexual or pornographic material, defined as ’explicit descriptions or displays of sexual organs or activities intended to stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic or emotional feelings.’” But in my test of Ani this afternoon, I found her more than willing to describe virtual sex with the user, including bondage scenes or simply just moaning on command.

Oh my.

Filipe Esposito at Macworld:

To recap, some leakers have already reported on the potential colors for some of the models in the iPhone 17 family. For instance, a leaker known as Majin Bu said that Apple had been experimenting with purple and green versions of the iPhone 17 base model. The leaker also claims that the rumored ultra-thin “iPhone 17 Air” model will be available in a light shade of blue.

More recently, reputable leaker Sonny Dickson also revealed the possible two new colors of the 17 Pro models: dark blue and copper. According to independent sources familiar with the matter heard by Macworld, we can indeed expect these new colors for the iPhone 17 lineup.

I’ve been looking forward to the iPhone 17 Air, but if there’s an iPhone 17 Pro in copper or orange, I’m going to be super conflicted about my purchase in the fall.