A HAYLOU anunciou nesta semana o HAYLOU Velo, um novo smartwatch que combina design contemporâneo com recursos práticos para o dia a dia. Com uma estrutura de liga de zinco, carregamento sem fio e duas pulseiras intercambiáveis incluídas na caixa, o Velo oferece uma alternativa versátil para quem deseja um smartwatch que combine com seu estilo pessoal e sua rotina diária.

Uma tela brilhante e um design diferenciado

O Velo conta com uma tela AMOLED de 1,96 polegada, resolução de 410×502 pixels e brilho máximo de até 1.500 nits, trazendo cores vibrantes e detalhes nítidos no pulso, mesmo em condições externos com muita luz.

Uma estrutura central de liga de zinco, vidro 2.5D e botões de liga de alumínio conferem ao relógio uma aparência limpa e contemporânea. Disponível nas cores preta e branca, o Velo foi desenhado para combinar com uma série de estilos do dia a dia.

Duas pulseiras, mais maneiras de usar

O Velo vem com duas pulseiras intercambiáveis: uma pulseira texturizada com padrão ondulado (para um visual diferenciado) e uma pulseira de silicone macio (para treinos e dias mais ativos). A troca entre elas permite aos usuários adaptar o relógio a diferentes roupas e ocasiões.

A personalização continua na tela, com mais de 200 mostradores disponíveis online, suporte a mostradores personalizados, quatro layouts para o menu principal e cinco estilos visuais.

Recursos inteligentes para a conveniência diária

O Velo mantém os usuários conectados com chamadas via Bluetooth e notificações inteligentes, além de ferramentas úteis, como controles de música e câmera, assistente de voz e localização do celular. Os usuários de Android também podem responder a mensagens do WhatsApp diretamente pelo pulso.

Com mais de 100 modos esportivos e monitoramento diário de atividades, o Velo foi construído para acompanhar os movimentos ao longo do dia, desde as atividades da rotina até os treinos.

Carregamento sem fio, menos complicações

O carregamento sem fio torna a recarga do Velo simples e conveniente. Sua bateria de 300mAh oferece até sete dias de uso, dependendo das configurações e do uso.

Com classificação de resistência à água de 1ATM, o Velo foi projetado para lidar com respingos cotidianos e chuva leve, mas não é indicado para natação ou banho.

Preço e disponibilidade

O HAYLOU Velo estará disponível nas cores preta e branca por meio dos canais oficiais de venda da HAYLOU e de parceiros varejistas selecionados em todo o mundo. O preço de varejo estimado é de aproximadamente US$45, com o preço final variando de acordo com o mercado, o varejista e o período promocional.

Para mais informações, acesse o site oficial.

Sobre a HAYLOU

A HAYLOU é uma marca global de tecnologia de dispositivos vestíveis inteligentes e áudio, comprometida em tornar a tecnologia cotidiana acessível. Por meio de produtos de áudio inteligente, dispositivos vestíveis e tecnologias práticas de saúde, a HAYLOU cria experiências confiáveis e agradáveis que ajudam as pessoas a levar vidas mais saudáveis, ativas e conectadas.

NOTA DE TRANSPARÊNCIA: O MacMagazine recebe uma pequena comissão sobre vendas concluídas por meio de links deste post, mas você, como consumidor, não paga nada a mais pelos produtos/serviços ao usar os nossos links de afiliado.

Sean Allen (via Rebecca Sloane):

iOS dev course sales plummeted due to AI. It costs a lot of money to host my courses online and with sales at basically $0, I’ve cancelled that hosting.

This closes down the site which unfortunately removes access to the courses.

[…]

I’ve put my recent course on sale at a large discount so you can get it before it’s gone and I’ve made old courses available for free if you want to grab those too.

The school will be online until November 24th so you have a few weeks to download these videos at seanallen.teachable.com.

A OPPO acaba de anunciar os novos smartphones da linha Find X10 que chegam ao mercado internacional meses depois do lançamento na China. Elvis Zhou, CEO da OPPO Europe diz que há mais modelos na calha e define estratégia para ser alternativa à Apple e Samsung nos modelos premium.

The post OPPO dá impulso a estratégia para top 3 nos smartphones premium. Linha Find X10 é um dos trunfos appeared first on Tek Notícias.

Os mais recentes números da SpaceX mostram uma transformação no peso dos diferentes negócios da empresa de Elon Musk, com a IA a assumir um papel central no crescimento financeiro.

The post SpaceX aumenta receitas em mais de 100% com inteligência artificial a ganhar peso appeared first on Tek Notícias.

Segundo os mais recentes dados da Teamlyzer, A Critical Techworks continua a ser a tecnológica mais pesquisada pelos profissionais de tecnologias em Portugal. A edição do terceiro trimestre do ano traz mudanças no topo da tabela, com a Revolut a entrar no pódio e várias empresas a subir posições no ranking.

The post Critical Techworks lidera interesse dos profissionais de tecnologia em Portugal. Revolut entra no “pódio” appeared first on Tek Notícias.

Explore o potencial das câmaras do seu iPhone com o ProCamera. Esta app dá acesso a controlos manuais, captura em RAW e ProRAW e vídeo em 4K com ProRes. O download é gratuito, mas passado os período de teste, exige subscrição ou compra única.

The post ProCamera: a app que transforma o iPhone numa câmara com controlos profissionais appeared first on Tek Notícias.

Seth Willits (2024, bug):

There’s a deprecation warning in Xcode for URL.path that reads:

WARNING: path will be deprecated in a future version of macOS: Use path(percentEncoded:) instead

The problem is something like this:

Bundle.main.url(forAuxiliaryExecutable: "tool")!.path

… which returns the expected file path (ex: /Applications/MyApp.app/Contents/tool)

would be quickly rewritten as suggested to:

Bundle.main.url(forAuxiliaryExecutable: "tool")!.path(percentEncoded: false)

… which simply returns tool, because the URL returned is relative to a base URL.

[…]

I’ve always found it not-completely-obvious to newcomers how to get a standard file path string from a file URL and this only makes it more confusing.

There are at least three issues here:

1. url.path returns an absolute path, but url.path(percentEncoded: false) returned a relative path as of his writing. I tested this on macOS 26, and now it returns an absolute path. The documentation now says, “This function will resolve against the base URL.” It seems the behavior of the method changed without it being documented when, so be careful if you’re deploying to a mix of OS versions.

2. percentEncoded has a default value of true, whereas path did not return an encoded string. In other words, url.path() and url.path are completely different. So this is another case where Apple updated the API but flipped the default—a good way to introduce bugs.

3. It’s not obvious how to get the full file system path out of a URL. With NSURL, url.path was natural and did the right thing. Now, the URL equivalent is deprecated.

   The natural replacement, url.path(), is wrong. So is Xcode’s recommendation of url.(percentEncoded: false).

   url.absoluteURL.path(percentEncoded: false) is correct but verbose.

   url.absoluteURL.standardizedFileURL.path(percentEncoded: false) is possibly better but even more verbose.

   FilePath(url)?.string uses a newer API but gives you an optional, even though for a file URL it should never fail.

   This seems like such basic functionality, but there’s no API that’s the obvious right choice, concise, and ergonomic.

Previously:

• The Switch From File Paths to URLs
• Swift URL Improvements at WWDC 2022
• Proposed Foundation URL Improvements
• URL Path Retrieval Cheat Sheet
• NSURL Path Handling

Giovanni Colantonio:

Seven years later, Apple Arcade hasn’t gone anywhere, and Apple itself hasn’t slowed its broader gaming efforts either. Between courting major publishers like Capcom to release their games on Mac to launching a proper gaming app, it’s clear that Apple still has its sights set on being a major player.

The latest example of that came this week as Apple launched an App Store event dubbed Indie Games Week. The week-long initiative saw Apple welcoming games like Vampire Crawlers to iOS and announcing an ambitious mobile version of No Man’s Sky. At the center of that push was Carson Oliver, the new head of App Store Worldwide following Phil Schiller’s sudden departure from the role this past August. The fact that one of his first acts in the role was spearheading an indie gaming showcase hints at where Oliver’s priorities might lie.

[…]

While Oliver sells the narrative with carefully worded precision, questions still linger around Apple’s wider gaming efforts. Continued investment in mixed reality gaming is uncertain given that Apple has reportedly cut down production of its Vision Pro headset due to underwhelming sales. And though Apple continues to court publishers and get games on iOS, we haven’t seen the full-throated support from major players like Capcom and Ubisoft in 2026 that was crucial to raising Apple’s gaming profile in 2023.

Previously:

• Apple TV 4K 2026
• App Store Moves From Phil Schiller to Eddy Cue
• Apple Games App
• Testimony on External Purchase Fee and Scare Screens
• App Store Business Reorg
• Monument Valley 3 in Netflix Games
• Inside Apple Arcade
• Hearing for Apple Violating Epic’s Injunction
• Apple Arcade’s Uncertain Future
• Apple’s Mac Gaming Push

Glenn Fleishman:

The odds of this change in standards causing a security breach and your messages being exposed seem unlikely, at least right now. But after scrolling through conversations and seeing what’s going on, I feel Apple has omitted important signals for users when iMessage suddenly stops being used during a conversation.

[…]

The impact of that hit me while revising my book: when iMessage isn’t available, Apple tells you only inline. Despite all the information Messages displays about iMessage being encrypted, the inverse state is faint. This kind of negative knowledge, or information about something not happening, can often be as important as something that does happen. A warning about a fuel tank approaching empty is the kind of information every driver (or pilot) needs, for instance. If you think end-to-end encryption—or Apple-based encryption—is critical for you, then a pop-up message or other warning is what you would expect.

[…]

If you’d like to prevent Messages from downgrading security, you have options, although they may not be fully desirable. All of these are managed on an iPhone at Settings: Apps: Messages. You can’t control these message settings from an iPad or Mac.

This recently happened to my mother, and it was very confusing for her. For unknown reasons, while at home on Wi-Fi, she got signed out of iMessage. But it was not clear to her that this had happened or that she should try to sign back in. She was not aware that the Messages app supports multiple protocols or what the different bubble colors mean. All she noticed was that certain messages (e.g. ones sharing files) would no longer send and that she was not receiving some of the messages that people were sending to her. She saw the inline warning about encryption and interpreted it as that the sender was using a newer form of encryption that her phone didn’t support, so maybe she needed to upgrade.

I went over to take a look and quickly figured out that she was signed out of iMessage, but I couldn’t fix it. I kept getting errors that iMessage couldn’t be activated, even after rebooting the phone. Eventually, much later and again for unknown reasons, activation succeeded.

Update (2026-10-20): Boris Yurkevich:

My concern is that the Retry as Text Message toggle no longer exist. Just a couple of weeks ago my sister sent me an iMessage while I was flying. I was not reachable. Later she told me that messages turned from blue to green.

The Hack (Hacker News):

Like the Trojan Horse, passkeys are legitimately elegant on the surface, but there is something troubling inside.

What’s important to know is that unlike with any other kind of login credential, you do not have ultimate control over your passkeys. With passwords, you can choose where to write them down; with authenticator apps, you can decide for yourself which ones to use (they’re pretty interchangeable); and with physical security keys you can hand them to your colleague if you really trust them. But with passkeys come a hidden dial that lets the websites you use them on gradually remove your ability to do as you please with them.

[…]

This is the feature that means you no longer get to make the calls about your passkeys. Fortunately, attested passkeys are not yet required on most websites. But the FIDO Alliance standard makes attestation a part of the passkey ecosystem, whether you want it or not. And even if the website doesn’t require attestation now, simply by using passkeys you indicate to the website that your setup supports the FIDO Alliance’s passkey standard and that you as a user are capable of using passkeys. This means that once Twitter (formally X) is satisfied that the overwhelming majority of its users would be unaffected, they can flip the switch – perhaps not all at once, perhaps just for ten thousand users at a time so as not to cause a fuss – and start rejecting non-attested passkeys.

[…]

My expectation is that the industry will start off with very few constraints on your passkeys, and gradually add more and more, not all at the same time, but staggered on different sites, and then in a few years people will forget that they were ever offered a choice in which security measures they want to enable on their passkeys (if they even knew there were different kinds of passkeys at all).

[…]

Remote attestation can allow them to verify that your device is not capable of, say, sending and receiving encrypted messages, or running a competitor’s app, or using social media without verifying your ID.

Apple’s passkey implementation currently does not support attestation, but it sounds like this is only until they can work out how to do syncing:

Attestation was designed to attest to a specific device, exclusively at the point of creation, with a specific set of security properties. It doesn’t make sense for synced credentials for a number of reasons, including syncing to devices with different security properties, changes in security properties that happen after key creation, security properties of the sync fabric, sharing the passkey, or exporting to other passkey providers. We’re working hard with W3C and FIDO to solve these problems.

Ricky Mondello:

The post is predicated on the idea that a feature of WebAuthn called “attestation”, which is only used in high-assurance and usually corporate scenarios, and usually with physical hardware security keys, will be leveraged to hurt people, somehow.

The post posits that a website like X will bait and switch users: first, you get a passkey. Then, later, scary “attested” passkeys! This simply isn’t possible to do because attestation isn’t supported on the web for mass market, consumer authentication.

Attestation for passkeys (software-based, syncable credentials) is antithetical to their mass market goals, and would freeze out independent, non-corporate-backed credential managers. It’s an explicit non-goal of the designers of passkeys, who work together in a forum anyone can join.

And trust me, websites and apps like banks repeatedly asked for attestation at the beginning of the industry’s passkey journey. The platforms, browsers, and credential management apps have held firm that the goal of passkeys is reducing phishing and not some kind of trusted computing scheme. (And I will note: over my dead body!)

I believe this is not the goal of Mondello and some of the others working on this, but so far I’ve not been convinced that they will be able to control it. It sounds like Apple is working on it, and once the technology is out there, what’s to prevent key sites from forcing it on users? It seems like all this would take is the cooperation of a few big credential managers. This would be to their benefit in the sense that it would make their products required. Smaller credential managers who resisted would be frozen out.

varx:

The fact that websites and apps have been asking for attestation just reinforces the main point of the passkeys post! Sure, browsers aren’t supporting it yet, but that’s the sort of thing that can change, and the sort of thing that has changed in the past. See the footnote on Widevine and Firefox. (“Currently not supported” is also very subject to change.)

And we already have sites and apps allowlisting passkey vendors. That’s no theoretical, slippery slope fear -- it’s a real restriction on user freedoms that’s already happening right now.

I don’t think that a couple of bad points (e.g. the TOTP thing) invalidate the main point of the post, because the post wasn’t an argument from authority. The author makes some good points that stand on their own.

Ricky Mondello:

To be clear, the websites have stopped asking for attestation. Or at least, they’ve stopped asking me. Why? Because they know there’s no use in asking — that the OS vendors, browsers, and passkey managers are unified on this front. And now they’ve seen firsthand that passkeys without attestation are awesome and a big step forward.

iinuwa:

This is antithetical to users, as the types of authenticators that can pull this off are difficult to use (security keys). Companies with IT departments who can do account recovery for the user can handle this, an average user cannot. Synced passkeys are the answer to this for consumers and therefore attestation does not belong in the consumer space. Which is why password managers are in the spec groups pushing back against this every time it comes up.

Scott Helme (Hacker News):

If a consumer website decided tomorrow that it would only accept attested passkeys, it would lock out almost all of its own users, instantly. What website is going to do that?

[…]

If you’re worried about attestation creeping into consumer logins, then that’s worth pushing back on, loudly (if it ever happens). But it hasn’t happened, the biggest providers don’t support it, and avoiding passkeys today while you wait for it won’t protect you from anything, it just leaves you open to phishing.

It seems like rejecting passkeys is the only way the average user has to push back. The main thing protecting us is that sites don’t want to lock out their users who rely on passwords and 2FA. Once most people have adopted passkeys, if Apple and Google sell us out, I don’t think it matters much what the rest of the alliance thinks. Sites would be able to require attestation with the assurance that users could easily comply. Safari would probably opt everyone into attested passkeys, as it currently opts you into passkeys in general (unless you uncheck “Allow Automatic Passkey Upgrades”).

Previously:

• Attestation News
• Locked Down Passkey and Keychain Backups
• Forcing Passkeys
• Passkeys Credential Exchange
• Web Environment Integrity

TheLastProject (Hacker News):

In the [EU age verification] README, the following is listed:

App and device verification based on Google Play Integrity API and Apple App Attestation

I would like to strongly urge to abandon this plan. Requiring a dependency on American tech giants for age verification further deepens the EU’s dependency on America and the USA’s control over the internet.

Bobby Borisov (Hacker News):

The European Union’s open-source age-verification project has drawn criticism after a maintainer confirmed that hardware-bound attestation is a mandatory architectural requirement, raising concerns about Linux, custom Android ROMs, and independently compiled applications.

[…]

The solution lets users prove they are over a certain age without revealing their name, exact birth date, or full identity document. To prevent credentials from being copied, cloned, or reused by modified clients, the project relies on keys stored in protected hardware like Android TEE, StrongBox, or Apple’s Secure Enclave.

However, critics claim that this approach endangers the system by making it dependent on a small number of approved devices, operating systems, and attestation providers.

Positiveblue (Hacker News):

Cloudflare’s new “signed agents” pitch sounds like safety but it’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing. They’ve built an allowlist for the open web and told builders to apply for permission. That’s not how the internet works. An application form is not a standard.

GrapheneOS:

Apple and Google are gradually expanding their use of hardware-based attestation. They’re convincing a growing number of services to adopt it. Google’s Play Integrity API and Apple’s App Attest API are very similar. Apple brought it to the web via Privacy Pass, which Google intends on doing too.

Google’s Play Integrity API requires hardware attestation for the strong integrity level and is gradually phasing in requiring it for the more commonly used device integrity level. Apple already has it as a requirement. Over the long term, this will increasingly lock out hardware and OS competition.

The purpose of these systems is disallowing people from using hardware and software not approved by Apple or Google. This is wrongly presented as being a security feature. Banks and government services are the main ones adopting it but Apple and Google are encouraging every service to use it.

German National EUDI Wallet Architecture Documentation (Hacker News):

When issuing the PID, the WB confirms to the PP (via OpenID4VCI Key Attestation) that the keys to which a PID is to be bound are controlled by an authentication means that meets certain security requirements with regard to resistance against attackers with a certain attack potential (see ISO/IEC 18045).

Simon B. Støvring:

It’s great that App Attest is coming to Mac with macOS 27. It means I can ship Canvases’ intelligence and sharing features with much more confidence, knowing I can protect the endpoints with App Attest.

Previously:

• Instagram Charging for Links
• The Age Verification Trap
• Apple Platform Security Guide (January 2026)
• EU Council Approves New “Chat Control” Mandate
• Google Abandons Web Environment Integrity API
• Web Environment Integrity
• App Attest

Howard Oakley:

Of all the privacy protections in macOS, those for local networking are among the most recent and the least understood.

[…]

All non-exempted apps and other processes start without any privilege. Those that try to make a local network connection result in the user being prompted to allow or deny their access. Your decision is then recorded in that app’s new entry in the Local Network section, and you can then set that to allow or deny its future access. For that to happen, the responsible app needs an additional item in its property list to explain to you why it requires that access, something that should appear in any prompt for access.

[…]

A process with a short life that immediately fails if it can’t complete a local network operation may not trigger a user prompt, and can continue to fail repeatedly as it can’t be granted the privilege. Apple recommends changing the code so that it doesn’t exit immediately after failure, to allow the prompt to be displayed and access granted.

Howard Oakley:

Another clue came in the statement in that note that “on macOS there’s no way to reset your program’s Local Network privilege to the undetermined state”. This contrasts with pretty well every other category of privacy protection, which are handled by the dreaded TCC, Transparency Consent and Control.

This has now changed in macOS 27.2.

TN3179:

During testing, you might want to reset your program’s Local Network privilege to the undetermined state. Your options for this vary by platform.

On iOS, the easiest option is to delete your app.

Alternatively, if you don’t want to delete your app for some reason, reset the entire privacy subsystem using Settings > General > Transfer or Reset > Reset > Reset Location & Privacy.

On macOS, the list in System Settings > Privacy & Security > Local Network has add (+) and remove (-) buttons. To reset your program’s Local Network privilege, select it in the list and click the remove button.

Previously:

• Local Network Privacy on Sequoia
• Local Network Privacy FAQ

A giant screen, big battery, rapid chip and top cameras push the great iPhone 18 Pro to the max with a price tag to match

Apple’s largest Pro iPhone gets its biggest battery upgrade yet to make it a true two-day phone with new Siri AI and a variable aperture camera.

The iPhone 18 Pro Max is the supersized sibling of the regular 18 Pro and, though it is no longer Apple’s most expensive phone thanks to the £2,000 iPhone Duo, it has a similarly large price tag to match costing from £1,299 (€1,599/$1,299/A$2,299).

Screen: 6.9in Super Retina XDR (120Hz OLED) (460ppi)

Processor: Apple A20 Pro

RAM: 12GB

Storage: 256, 512GB or 1TB

Operating system: iOS 27

Camera: 48MP + 48MP UW + 48MP 4x, 18MP front-facing

Connectivity: 5G, wifi 7, NFC, Bluetooth 6, Thread, USB-C, Satellite, UWB and GNSS

Water resistance: IP68 (6 metres for 30 mins)

Dimensions: 163.4 x 78 x 8.75mm

Weight: 249g

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

© Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

© Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

John Voorhees:

Earlier this week, I was at OpenAI’s annual DevDay conference where it launched Dots, a personal agent that lives inside the ChatGPT app.

[…]

Dots are persistent, cloud-based agents that use the plugins and other tools you’ve connected to ChatGPT, after you allow them to do so. Your Dot has its own virtual Linux computer to assist you with your work. And at first, your Dot, which is depicted by a colorful character you can customize, doesn’t have access to anything else. However, as you give your Dot tasks that need access to other tools, it will ask for your permission to access other tools.

[…]

But being a cloud-based agent has its downsides, too. Out of the box, your Dot can’t access your computer’s files and apps. That’s easily fixed by clicking or tapping on your Dot and granting it access to your Mac, so it can use the Mac alongside its own VM.

Previously:

• Unspecified Full Disk Access Screw Tightening
• OpenClaw 2.0
• Meta AI for Mac and Muse
• Grok Bot
• Siri AI Ships (But Still Beta)
• ChatGPT Work and ChatGPT Classic
• Claude Desktop App
• Gemini App for Mac

Adam Engst:

Apple has significantly improved dictation in iOS 27 by adding a few capabilities for editing text from the Voice Control system. In other words, Apple has finally done some of the things I requested in “How iOS and macOS Dictation Can Learn from Voice Control’s Dictation” (31 August 2020). Remember, dictation is what you get when you tap the microphone button on the keyboard, while Voice Control is an all-encompassing system that you turn on in Settings > Accessibility > Voice Control. The problem with leaving Voice Control on permanently is that it’s constantly listening and thus inserting text when you don’t want that, and at times I have felt that its dictation isn’t as good.

Most notably, when you’re using iOS’s regular dictation, you can now change the case of words and phrases by saying “Capitalize phrase” or “Lowercase phrase.” Incorrect capitalization of words drives me up the wall. Equally useful is the ability to fix misheard or misspoken words by saying “Replace phrase1 with phrase2.” Most other Voice Control commands aren’t available in dictation, but you can say “Select phrase” and “Undo that.”

[…]

Unfortunately, while Apple added some of Voice Control’s capabilities to dictation in iOS 27, it didn’t extend that effort to macOS 27 Golden Gate. Put simply, when you use dictation in macOS, you don’t have access to any text-editing commands.

Previously:

• Apple’s 2026 Accessibility Feature Preview
• 2025 Apple Vision Accessibility Report Card

Chance Miller:

Apple has confirmed an issue causing a “small number” of iPhone 18 Pro Max devices on AT&T to lose cellular service.

Apple released software and carrier updates to prevent the issue from affecting additional users, but the company tells 9to5Mac that devices that have already lost service will require a hardware replacement.

John Gruber:

It’s only a problem for AT&T customers. No such problems on Verizon or T-Mobile.

[…]

It’s only the 18 Pro Max, not the regular 18 Pro. The salient fact here is that the only iPhone 18 Pro models that use Qualcomm cellular modems, rather than Apple’s own C2 modem, are 18 Pro Max devices in the U.S..

[…]

I’d love to understand how a software update can prevent existing devices from being affected, but a software update cannot restore service to existing devices that have already been affected.

Joe Rossignol:

Apple and AT&T have yet to disclose the underlying cause of the issue.

Eric Schwarz (Mastodon):

It could be as simple as a power calculation geared towards devices with Apple’s C2 modems.

[…]

The other weird variable seems to be AT&T—out of the three US carriers, AT&T is the only one with a lot of the 3.45GHz 5G band in use[…] Most AT&T MVNOs like Cricket, U.S. Mobile, Gigs-based services, and H2O still use 5G NSA on AT&T and it seems they haven’t gotten the new carrier bundles on 18 Pro Maxes.

[…]

Because of those things, my working theory is that an 18 Pro Max on AT&T was connecting to 5G SA and when it was on that unique 3.45GHz band (maybe trying to hold on to spotty service?), it would basically cook its modem and there’s no fix other than replacement.

Previously:

• iOS 27.0.1 and iPadOS 27.0.1
• iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max

In my iOS and iPadOS 27 review, I wrote about one of the more interesting additions to the Shortcuts app for power users: automation triggers based on the contents of push notifications received on your device. As I explained, with this new trigger, you can create automations that run certain actions whenever a notification from a specific app, ideally containing a specific title or body text, arrives on your iPhone and iPad.

Deflector, a free utility by indie developer Cizzuk Shihu, leverages this feature in a fun and novel way: it lets you run any shortcut from your Shortcuts library directly – without launching the Shortcuts app first – from either the Dynamic Island or a Live Activity on the Lock Screen.

The concept isn’t new: we’ve seen shortcut launchers embedded in Live Activities before. What’s different is that while previous solutions relied on the Shortcuts URL scheme to open the Shortcuts app and then run a shortcut, Deflector’s approach is entirely self-contained in a Live Activity and doesn’t force you to lose the context of what you’re doing. Tap a shortcut, and it runs immediately – just like the Shortcuts widget works on the Home Screen.

The question is: how?

The ingenious implementation behind Deflector is the aforementioned automation support for notifications. When you install Deflector, you’re asked to also install a companion shortcut aptly called ‘Deflector Automation’. This shortcut, thanks to changes in iOS and iPadOS 27, contains a shareable automation that you need to enable, which is another major change of the Shortcuts app I covered here. Open the automation, and you’ll notice that it contains a notification trigger that parses the contents of a notification, allowing Shortcuts to run a shortcut directly via the native ‘Run Shortcut’ action.

And here lies the magic trick behind Deflector: whenever you tap a shortcut in its Live Activity, the app sends a notification to itself that contains the name of the shortcut you want to run in the body text of the notification. When the “self notification” arrives – and these are silent notifications that you won’t even see on-screen – the associated Shortcuts automation is triggered, the name of the shortcut is passed to the ‘Run Shortcut’ action, and voila – the shortcut runs, no x-callback-URL necessary.

That’s all there is to Deflector, effectively. You can choose how many shortcuts you want to display in the Live Activity, and you can also choose an SF Symbol and color for each one. The process of fetching shortcuts from your library is handled by the same automation, which uses an App Intent and the ‘Get My Shortcuts’ action to pass the full list of your shortcuts back to Deflector in a couple of seconds. This is another novel implementation I’ve never seen anywhere else.

There are some optimizations I’d like to see in Deflector. There is, for instance, a one-second delay between tapping a shortcut and seeing the shortcut execute on-screen, which is most likely the time it takes for the notification to be sent, delivered, and parsed by Shortcuts behind the scenes. I also wish I could rename launchers in the Dynamic Island to use custom names: if you rename a launcher, it’ll break the ability for Deflector to find a matching shortcut in your library.

These are minor complaints about a free utility based on a genius workaround that has allowed me to launch shortcuts more quickly than before and, most importantly, tie two different sets of shortcuts to the Action button and the Dynamic Island. One of the reasons I still love writing about indie apps after all these years is exemplified by Deflector: in the right hands, new Apple APIs and frameworks can be applied by indie developers to ideas that Apple didn’t foresee in the first place.

Deflector is free on the App Store. If you’re a Shortcuts user, you’ll want to play with this app right away.

Whether Apple Watch can pair with multiple iPhones, the storage demands of Apple Intelligence, and preparing Macs for the end of Rosetta support kick off this discussion. Other topics include whether expensive phones need cases, AI photo editing versus Photoshop, Pixelmator Pro as an Adobe alternative, and what Adobe’s acquisition of Topaz Labs means for  users. 

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Earlier this week, I was at OpenAI’s annual DevDay conference where it launched Dots, a personal agent that lives inside the ChatGPT app. I set up my Dot and named it Puck after the mischievous sprite in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In the days since then, I’ve found myself using Puck more and more. There are still rough edges, but I thought I’d share what’s working and what’s not, and how Dots are different from what’s already available in ChatGPT and Codex.

Dots are persistent, cloud-based agents that use the plugins and other tools you’ve connected to ChatGPT, after you allow them to do so. Your Dot has its own virtual Linux computer to assist you with your work. And at first, your Dot, which is depicted by a colorful character you can customize, doesn’t have access to anything else. However, as you give your Dot tasks that need access to other tools, it will ask for your permission to access other tools. The pacing of this initial interaction with your Dot is really well done. The requests felt natural and allowed me to get comfortable with expanding what I let Puck do without feeling like annoying interruptions.

Dots are available on mobile and desktop devices, and because they are cloud-based, your Dot’s chat is always synced between devices. But being a cloud-based agent has its downsides, too. Out of the box, your Dot can’t access your computer’s files and apps. That’s easily fixed by clicking or tapping on your Dot and granting it access to your Mac, so it can use the Mac alongside its own VM. As with Codex’s Remote feature, using a remote Mac with your Dot requires the ChatGPT app to be open on that Mac, too.

One big limitation here is that you can only connect to one Mac at a time. I work on a Mac Studio that sits on my desk, but have two Mac minis that run a variety of scripts and other workflows. However, to connect to either of those minis, I first have to grant the Dot permission to use that Mac from that Mac mini, which is far from ideal when you’re working remotely. Sure, it’s easy enough to grant my Dot permission to use my laptop as I type on it in a coffee shop, but the moment I want it to update a script on my Mac mini server, I first have to connect to the mini remotely, authorize the Dot to access it, and then switch back to my laptop. If I’m on a bad Wi-Fi connection, that’s not necessarily possible. I’d love to see Dots become their own Tailscale entities the way Meta’s Muses can, which would solve this limitation.

A second limitation of Dots is that you can only have one. If you work with it all day long, your conversation is going to get long, and you’ll find yourself scrolling back through your history looking for something you got from your Dot earlier in the day. Search doesn’t work with your Dot’s thread. Also, OpenAI would tell you that you only need a single Dot anyway, because it’s based on Astra, which is a strong generalist model that obviates the need for specialized agents. However, that only addresses one aspect of why you’d want multiple Dots. You might want your Dot to run multiple large projects in parallel with the ability to monitor their progress without the back and forth with your Dot interleaving multiple topics. Or, you might just want the orderliness of separating personal and work tasks or one project from another.

The good news is that OpenAI is well aware of the popularity of Grok Bot’s multi-agent approach and said that a multi-Dot future is planned for the future. However, because OpenAI has so many users and Dots aren’t being charged as usage against your subscription for the time being, I walked away with the impression that the limitation has more to do with OpenAI taking a conservative approach to avoid running out of server capacity than a philosophical opposition to teams of Dots.

The best strategies I’ve found to deal with the one Dot problem is to spin tasks off into Codex threads when an idea becomes a full-blown project, leaving your Dot to manage it. I’ve done this a couple of times, and it’s been a reliable way to cut down on the traffic in my main Dot thread. A second approach is to take some written product from your Dot and dump it into a Space, which is a lot like a rudimentary Notion document where you can continue asking ChatGPT questions related to the document and collaborate with colleagues. The only downside is that Spaces is currently a bit buggy in my experience.

What I’d like to see instead is for Dots to replace Projects. Instead of a folders of threads system, let a Dot take over a project and associate repos, documents, Spaces, and other assets with it, allowing your head Dot to coordinate work among multiple Dots in parallel. That orchestrating Dot should also be able to act as a messenger between Dot clusters, allowing one team of Dots to share their work on a project with another team facing a similar issue.

For now though, your Dot stands alone, burdened with all your requests, big and small. There’s no model to pick, effort level to specify, or speed to tweak, just ask your bot to do something and it gets to work. It’s a simple, compelling way to tackle everyday tasks, but it’s not ideal for big projects.

As I mentioned before, I’ve already begun spinning bigger projects out from my Dot’s thread. This was already how I was working before Dots were launched. I have a series of big projects with their own folders, resources, and threads. However, I got into the habit of starting a daily thread in an “operations” project that I created for everyday work tasks. The “operations” project has memories of how I do things and access to Notion databases with schedules, tracking, and other reference materials.

If that sounds a lot like what my Dot can do, it’s because it is. However the differences are meaningful. When I create a new thread in my “operations” project in Codex, the new thread has no idea what was in the last thread unless I tell it or point it at that thread or a tool that can provide the context it needs. Also, while Codex’s Remote feature is vastly better today than even a few months ago, I still find myself pinning the latest operations thread because it can still get lost in the sea of threads in Codex’s Remote view.

In contrast, Puck sits in the cloud with one thread that’s always synced and has access to all my tools. That means it carries useful context about my preferences and ongoing work from one day to the next, and because it sits just under “New Chat” in the sidebar, it’s easy to find. I also appreciate the fact that I don’t have to think about what model to use or the reasoning level. That’s just mental overhead that leaves you kicking yourself when you realize you accidentally asked Astra to add some numbers together with Max effort.

So, on balance, my experience with Dots has been good but with caveats. I want to allow my Dot to not just orchestrate Codex projects, but also work across Macs without my intervention, allowing me to develop a script on my Mac Studio and deploy it to my server seamlessly. I also want to create specialist Dots with specific sets of tools, permissions, and areas of expertise and abilities that can be sent to work on multiple projects in parallel with my main Dot orchestrating it all.

Imagine setting up a team of Dots the way you’d create a party of heroes in an RPG, balancing their abilities to fit with the work you do. For now, though, I’m content with asking my Dot to set up tasks, check my email, coordinate my Codex projects, do light research, and perform other small tasks, especially since doing so doesn’t currently count against my OpenAI subscription (unless your Dot starts a Codex or Work session), freeing up my token allotment for bigger projects.