Apple’s AI plan may soon put a little money back into customers’ pockets. Some iPhone owners in the United States could receive payouts of up to US$ 95 after Apple agreed to settle a US$ 250 million class-action lawsuit tied to its heavily promoted Siri AI features.

The lawsuit accused Apple of advertising advanced artificial intelligence capabilities that were not available when certain iPhones reached consumers. Plaintiffs argued the company sold buyers on a smarter Siri experience that remained delayed long after launch.

The proposed settlement still requires approval from a federal judge before payments can go out.

Apple unveiled its Apple Intelligence platform during the iPhone 16 launch cycle in 2024. The company promoted a new generation of Siri features alongside the iPhone 16 lineup and select iPhone 15 Pro models.

Apple positioned the AI upgrades as a major selling point. The company promised a more personalized Siri assistant with stronger contextual awareness and deeper app integration. But consumers alleged those features failed to appear when the devices launched.

The lawsuit, initially filed by California resident Peter Landsheft in March 2025, claimed Apple misled buyers through aggressive AI-focused marketing campaigns. Additional plaintiffs later joined the case in federal court in San Francisco. According to court filings, the complaint said Apple "deceived millions of consumers into spending hundreds of dollars on a phone they did not need, based on features that do not exist."

The filing also stated Apple was caught off-guard by consumer demand for the Siri AI tools. Buyers reportedly became frustrated after learning the features would arrive later than expected. Apple still has not fully delivered the Siri overhaul nearly two years after first promoting the upgrades.

Apple denied the allegations in the lawsuit and maintained it acted properly. In a statement reported by USA TODAY, Apple said it resolved the case in an effort to continue "delivering the most innovative products and services to our users."

The company also issued another statement cited by the Associated Press. Apple said, "Apple has reached a settlement to resolve claims related to the availability of two additional features." The statement continued, "We resolved this matter to stay focused on doing what we do best, delivering the most innovative products and services to our users."

Court documents showed Apple defended its broader AI rollout during settlement discussions. The company said it already launched more than 20 Apple Intelligence features and plans to release more Siri-related AI tools through future software updates. Both parties filed the proposed settlement agreement on May 5. A federal judge will review the deal during a hearing scheduled for June.

If approved, the settlement will cover consumers in the United States who purchased eligible devices between 10 June 2024, and 29 March 2025. Eligible devices include the iPhone 16, iPhone 16e, iPhone 16 Plus, iPhone 16 Pro, iPhone 16 Pro Max, iPhone 15 Pro, and iPhone 15 Pro Max.

Consumers could receive at least US$ 25 for each eligible device. The payout may increase to as much as US$ 95 depending on the number of approved claims and other factors. Court filings said eligible customers will receive notifications by email or standard mail with instructions for filing claims through a settlement website.

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Over the past month, A.I. detection has been at the center of a series of controversies: Hachette pulled the horror novel "Shy Girl" by Mia Ballard after detectors flagged it as substantially A.I.-generated.

The New York Times cut ties with a freelance book critic who admitted that an A.I. editing tool had regurgitated passages from a Guardian article into his draft. The Atlantic reported that a "Modern Love" column had been flagged as more than 60 percent A.I.-generated.

In certain corners of social media, A.I.-detector screenshots are shared like mug shots, and pile-ons have the grim energy of public stonings.

This may all seem understandable—people want to know if what they’re reading was generated by a bot, and some argue they deserve to know. However, such controversy narrows the issue of A.I.’s steady encroachment to one of process, rather than impact.

Drawing a red line around using chatbots to generate prose may make it easier to ignore the way that the technology may be shaping writing before one even types a single word. And a culture of callouts, scandals, and fear may prevent media and publishing from wrestling with much thornier questions of authorship.

At the center of many of these controversies is a company called Pangram, whose CEO, Max Spero, has become the go-to authority when A.I. authorship disputes erupt. On Twitter/X, where Spero calls himself a "slop janitor," a user flagged a Guardian sports journalist’s writing as A.I.-generated. The publication responded that this was "the same style he’s used for 11 years writing for the Guardian, long before LLMs existed. The allegation is preposterous."

Spero quote-tweeted the exchange with a Pangram time-series analysis of 871 articles by the journalist: "It’s clear that he is increasingly relying on AI. In two weeks in February he churned out nine articles classified by Pangram as fully AI-generated. Receipts below."

Or take Pangram’s appearance in the Shy Girl cancellation. Readers on Reddit and YouTube had been flagging the horror novel as suspiciously A.I. for months, but then Spero ran the full manuscript and posted the result (78 percent A.I.-generated). Hachette pulled the book the day the Times piece ran. A story in the Atlantic soon followed. Spero was on LinkedIn, urging publishers to "strictly moderat[e] AI generated content" and "draft and enforce robust AI-use policy."

A pattern emerges: The crowd suspects a problem, then Pangram validates the suspicion, stokes the mob, and sells the solution. The impulse to dismiss all this as a detector company drumming up business runs into an issue—Pangram actually works way better than you might think. Brian Jabarian, a University of Chicago economist who conducted a rigorous independent evaluation of A.I. detectors, told me flatly, "This narrative that we shouldn’t use A.I. detection doesn’t seem to hold anymore."

Jabarian’s preprint, co-authored with Alex Imas and with no disclosed financial ties to the company, tested the tool across nearly 2,000 passages and found near-zero false-positive and false-negative rates on medium-to-long texts, the length of a typical op-ed or a verbose Amazon review.

Independent benchmarks confirm that Pangram outperforms every other detector tested and is robust against "humanizers," or software designed to smuggle A.I. text past detectors. So when Spero posts a time-series chart of hundreds of articles showing when a journalist’s output started sounding fishily like ChatGPT, I am inclined to believe it. That A.I. detection is finally catching up is, on balance, a Good Thing. A.I.-generated articles already far outnumber human ones. Social media is flooded with low-effort slop. According to Pangram’s own research, a fifth of peer reviews submitted to the A.I. research conference ICLR are fully A.I.-generated, and 9 percent of American newspapers contain undisclosed bot use. In this A.I.-powered asphyxiation of the information ecosystem, Spero has positioned himself on social media as a folk hero hauling in the oxygen tanks. You can tag his company’s bot on Twitter/X, and it will tell you whether a post is A.I. On Spero’s social media to-do list: a "slop hunter of the week leaderboard."

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Apple may be joining the smart glasses market a little bit late, but it could be covering all its bases with up to four potential styles for its upcoming product. According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple could launch some or all of the four styles it's currently testing for its smart glasses.

Gurman reported Apple is testing out a large rectangular frame that's comparable to Ray-Ban Wayfarers, a slimmer rectangular design like the glasses that Apple CEO Tim Cook wears, a larger oval or circular frame and a smaller oval or circle option. Apple is also working on a range of colors, including black, ocean blue and light brown, according to Bloomberg.

Internally code-named N50 for now, Apple's upcoming smart glasses will compete directly with the second-gen Ray-Ban Meta model. While similar, Apple might be differentiating its design with "vertically oriented oval lenses with surrounding lights," according to the report.

Like Meta's smart glasses, Apple's upcoming product will capture photos and videos, but is meant to better sync with an iPhone, allowing users to take advantage of Apple's ecosystem for editing, sharing, phone calls, notifications, music and even its voice assistant, according to Gurman. The release of Apple's smart glasses could even coincide with the upcoming improved Siri that should arrive with iOS 27.

Gurman reported that Apple could reveal its smart glasses as soon as the end of 2026 or early 2027, followed by an official release sometime in 2027. As for the competition, Meta released its latest model that's better suited for prescription lenses and offers a more customizable fit.

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A couple of weeks after Apple released iOS 26.4 to iPhone users, the company is now making iOS 26.4.1 available. With this version, Apple is fixing an annoying bug that was preventing users from syncing iCloud data, including apps like Apple Passwords.

While Apple has been vague about this software update, 9to5Mac discovered a thread on the Apple Developer Forums that reveals iOS 26.4.1 fixes the iCloud Sync issue.

This thread was created after iOS 26.4 was released. One developer said that making changes to a document on a Mac didn't trigger the same file on the iPhone to be updated. After this complaint, one Apple Worldwide Developer Relations suggested fixing the issue through macOS, as the app might have failed to export data to CloudKit. However, as more users reported the same issue, Apple started taking the reports very seriously, which led to this update.

With iOS 26.4.1, the same Apple employee posted in the threads asking whether these users could update to iOS 26.4.1 to see if the problem was resolved. Replies from users report that everything works perfectly now.

If you're running iOS 26.5 beta 1, you don't need to worry about this iCloud Sync bug as long as you've installed the latest revised version. While Apple is still in the early days of the new iOS 26.5 beta cycle, it has seeded a new version of the first beta to address the iCloud app sync issue.

While we wait for Apple to announce the new Siri powered by a Google Gemini model, iOS 26.5 looks like a small update. So far, it's adding end-to-end encryption for RCS and setting up ads on Apple Maps in the U.S. and Canada, allowing businesses to place ads in search results and a new "Suggested Places" section in the app.

Last but not least, Apple is working to offer forward notifications on third-party smartwatches in Europe in accordance with the Digital Markets Act legislation. With this update, Apple will also expand answering notifications, Live Activities, and AirPods-like pairing to third-party smartwatches and headphones.

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Tech giant Apple is planning to close the doors on three retail locations in June, including the first store to win a unionized staff.

The employees of the Apple store in Towson, Maryland, north of Baltimore, voted to unionize with the International Association of Machinists & Aerospace Workers (IAM) in 2022. The union is organized with the Coalition of Organized Retail Employees (CORE).

A second Apple store in Oklahoma City voted to unionize shortly after Townson's historic action. Despite the forward momentum, other Apple unionization efforts have petered out under mounting pressure from the company, CNBC reports.

Towson employees were notified of the closure in a recent staff call. The group ratified its first contract with Apple in 2024, set to expire in 2027. According to union representatives, Apple has said they are prevented from relocating employees under the union's Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), but encouraged them to apply for other open positions. Apple employees at the two other locations set to close — Apple North County, in Escondido, California, and Apple Trumbull in Trumbull, Connecticut — will be moved to nearby stores.

IAM said Apple's claims about its inability to relocate employees at the Maryland store are false, and alleges the closure is "a cynical attempt to bust the union."

Apple says "declining conditions" in local shopping corridors, including the departure of retailers from the Townson Town Center mall, and a shift away from mall locations, prompted the closures.

In a statement following the announcement, IAM representatives wrote: "The IAM Union is outraged by Apple's decision to close its Towson, Md., store — the first unionized U.S. Apple retail location — and abandon both its workers and a community that relies on it for critical services and its unique access to public transit."

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Apple was able to do something remarkable with the iPhone 17 prices last year. Despite increases in manufacturing costs and overall inflation, Apple didn't raise iPhone prices.

The standard iPhone 17 starts at US$ 799, the same price as its predecessors, while featuring double the storage for the price point and specifications comparable to the iPhone 17 Pro. The iPhone 17 Pro Max also launched at the same price as its predecessor, US$ 1,199.

Apple made some changes to the iPhone price structure, though. The US$ 999 iPhone Air replaced the US$ 899 iPhone 16 Plus, although the ultra-thin handset also featured double the storage.

The iPhone 17 Pro started at US$ 1,099 instead of US$ 999, but that was the same price as the 256 GB iPhone 16 Pro. That said, the iPhone is still an expensive device in the U.S. That's why carriers like T-Mobile run promotions that offer subscribers free iPhone 17 models, of course, with its terms and conditions.

But the iPhone is even more expensive abroad, with India being one of the countries where the iPhone 17 series is significantly more expensive than in the U.S.

For instance, iPhone 17 is priced at 82,900 INR (US$ 876) vs. $799. iPhone Air is quoted at 119,900 INR (US$ 1,267) vs. $999. iPhone 17 Pro is priced at 134,900 INR (US$ 1,426) vs. $1,099, while iPhone 17 Pro Max is being sold at 149,900 INR (US$ 1,584) vs. $1,199.

There is one pricing caveat for the base iPhone. Apple applies a US$ 30 connectivity discount to the regular iPhone 17 price in the U.S. That's been the case for years for non-Pro devices. Apple used the same US$ 799 price in previous years with this distinction. Buying an unlocked iPhone 17 from Apple without connecting it to a carrier costs $829 instead of $799.

The more premium the iPhone model, the more expensive it is to purchase in India compared to the U.S. Buyers will pay over US$ 300 more for the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max in India, even though Apple manufactures many iPhone models in the country. However, that's not because Apple chooses to set higher prices in specific markets. Other factors impact international prices, including the currency exchange rate, local taxes, and import costs.

First, it's important to note that the iPhone prices that Apple advertises in India include tax, whereas the U.S. prices do not. The Goods and Services Tax (GST) rate for mobile devices is 18 percent, which partly explains the higher price tag. Also, some smartphone parts used in iPhone assembly in India may be subject to import tariffs, though last year, the Indian government removed some duties. Finally, there's Apple's need to protect iPhone pricing against foreign exchange fluctuations. A weaker rupee may lead to higher iPhone prices in the region.

India has been assembling iPhones for years, with Apple steadily increasing the number of models made in the country and the production volume. The most recent data shows that India assembles all iPhone 17 variants and the iPhone 16 models Apple still sells.

Volume increased from 36 million in 2024 to 55 million in 2025, as Apple has tried to reduce its reliance on China. That's about 25 percent of the number of iPhones Apple manufactures each year. However, not all iPhone components are manufactured in India, and some may be subject to import duties that could impact the manufacturing cost. Also, Apple isn't likely to offer preferential pricing to India just because it manufactured the handset in the region.

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