Breakout hit comedy show "Small Prophets" has been renewed for a second season, according to Deadline, a little over a week after Apple TV acquired the worldwide rights to the show's first season. This was the first time the company has acquired the streaming rights to an existing show.

"Small Prophets" is set to stream on ‌Apple TV‌ worldwide starting on October 7, with creator Mackenzie Crook returning to write and direct season two.
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TrinamiX, a subsidiary of the German chemical giant BASF, is suing Apple in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, accusing the company of infringing seven patents related to face authentication technology used in Face ID.


In its complaint, first reported by Reuters, trinamiX said it spent years developing technology to stop people from fooling face unlock systems with a photo, a fake mask, or a silicone copy of someone's face.

The complaint says Apple's original version of ‌Face ID‌, introduced with the iPhone X in 2017, did not use trinamiX's technology, but that newer iPhones and iPads do. TrinamiX's system is designed to tell real skin apart from things like photos or masks, essentially adding a check that catches fakes conventional optical face scanning methods would miss.

The complaint alleges that "Apple knew or should have known of the high probability that updating its iPhones and iPads to incorporate ‌Face ID‌ using material and skin detection" infringed seven trinamiX patents, causing "substantial damages and irreparable injury." The seven patents cover two areas: detecting skin during face unlock and identifying what material something is made of.

TrinamiX names a broad swath of Apple devices as accused products, including the iPhone 15, iPhone 15 Plus, iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, iPhone 16, iPhone 16e, ‌iPhone 16‌ Plus, ‌iPhone 16‌ Pro, ‌iPhone 16‌ Pro Max, iPhone 17, iPhone 17e, iPhone 17 Pro, ‌iPhone 17 Pro‌ Max, iPhone Air, 11-inch iPad Pro (4th generation), 12.9-inch ‌iPad Pro‌ (6th generation), and the 11- and 13-inch ‌iPad Pro‌ models with the M4 and M5 chips.

TrinamiX is asking the court to find that Apple infringed its patents, to block Apple from making, using, selling, offering for sale, or importing the accused products, and to award damages and attorneys' fees. The company has requested a jury trial. The full complaint is available via IP Fray.
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Apple today announced a new series of games coming to Apple Arcade in October, headlined by "Pusheen's Place."



The new games heading to ‌Apple Arcade‌ next month are as follows:

• Pusheen's Place: The first officially licensed game starring Pusheen the Cat, letting players build a cozy paradise and collect more than 100 kitties while playing, crafting, and decorating rooms for characters like Pusheenicorn and Pancake Pusheen, alongside mini games such as Snack Stack, Parfait Pop, and Batch Match.


• River City Survivors: An explosive survivors-like action game from the long running River City series, throwing players into waves of zombies with more than 20 playable characters, including franchise mainstays Kunio and Riki, and support for up to two companions.


• Terraria+: A sandbox action adventure game where players fight, explore, and build through an ever expanding world, including the "Bigger & Boulder" 1.4.5 update, which adds a "Dead Cells" crossover and Pals from "Palworld," with support for up to seven players via Game Center or local Wi-Fi.


• Touchgrind BMX 2+: A physics-based BMX stunt game with two finger controls designed to make every trick feel real.


• 4 Pics 1 Word+: The Arcade edition of the puzzle game that has stumped and delighted more than 400 million players worldwide.

All of the new games will be available on October 1, 2026. Pusheen's Place joins Arcade's existing lineup of "cozy" titles, including "Hello Kitty Island Adventure," "Tamagotchi Adventure Kingdom," and "Cozy Caravan."

‌Apple Arcade‌ is a subscription service that provides access to more than 200 games across the iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV, and Apple Vision Pro, all free of ads and in-app purchases. In the U.S., ‌Apple Arcade‌ costs $6.99 per month with a one-month free trial, and customers who purchase a new iPhone, ‌iPad‌, Mac, or ‌Apple TV‌ get three months of the service for free. ‌Apple Arcade‌ is also included in Apple One's Individual ($21.95), Family ($27.95), and Premier ($39.95) plans in the U.S., each with a one-month free trial. ‌Apple Arcade‌ can be accessed through the App Store and the Apple Games app.
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Former Apple CEO Tim Cook played a major role in the development of the foldable iPhone, which could reach around $3,000 with storage upgrades, according to new details shared by Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.


Early in the development of the foldable iPhone, the company reportedly targeted a starting retail price of $1,999, hoping to come under the "potentially controversial $2,000 barrier." The idea was to replicate the debut of the iPhone X in 2017, which started at $999.

Amid the impact of the global memory shortage, Apple is said to have recently discussed pricing the foldable at $2,199. Some storage configurations could approach $3,000. While the company anticipates some "sticker shock" for consumers, the willingness of customers to spend around $2,000 on iPhone models with upgraded storage convinced the company that an "upscale foldable device was worth bringing to market."

Gurman also revealed details about the history of the foldable iPhone inside Apple. Around 2020, Cook apparently returned from a visit to Asia "unusually energized" about foldable phones. During the trip, he saw growing numbers of consumers using foldable devices from the likes of Samsung and Huawei. He came to believe that Apple needed an equivalent offering in the market and pushed the company to accelerate its development efforts.

Apple's hardware engineering team had been studying foldable phones, displays, and related components for years, dating back to well before the launch of the first Galaxy Fold device in 2019. Before Cook's guidance, the project was mired by debates over the form that an Apple foldable should take, with one early concept being an iPad mini that could unfold into a larger tablet. Cook wanted the final device to be more mainstream in the form of a foldable iPhone, and his level of involvement in the project was unusual.

The project was conceived under Dan Riccio, who preceded John Ternus as head of hardware engineering. The company apparently prioritized resolving four main challenges: reducing the visibility of the display crease, improving hinge reliability, creating a new flexible cover glass for the inner display, and developing under-display camera technology.

The company eventually settled on a hinge system made using titanium and aluminum and custom cover glass developed with Corning. Despite being less durable than other existing iPhone models, Apple is said to believe that the construction quality of the foldable iPhone is industry-leading for the foldable market, and thinks it has an advantage over Android devices in terms of software.

Gurman restated several of the device's rumored specifications, including a 7.8-inch inner display, a 5.5-inch outer display, and a wide form-factor design. During development, Apple designers apparently compared the folded proportions of the device to a passport and the unfolded proportions to a Magic Trackpad. The short-and-wide design was chosen to provide a point of differentiation with rival foldable and generate consumer interest.

He reiterated that the foldable iPhone may be less durable than a conventional iPhone, with an inferior camera system and less battery life. Despite these drawbacks, Apple employees are said to believe "the company will sell every foldable phone it can produce."

Gurman also noted that the foldable iPhone's engineering complexity "makes it an ideal showcase" for new CEO John Ternus, following his career as Apple's hardware chief. Ternus was apparently a major champion of the device and played a major role to "push it over the finish line," alongside Cook.

Apple's foldable iPhone is expected to be announced tomorrow at its "Surprise and shine" event. See the full Bloomberg report for more information.
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Last month, Apple announced a new Mac mini built around the all-new M6 chip and the M5 Pro, replacing the M4 and M4 Pro models that had been on sale since October 2024. Pre-orders are open now, with the machines arriving to customers and in stores on September 22.


The M6 model starts at $899 and the M5 Pro model at $1,699, each $100 above what its predecessor was selling for by the end of its run and $300 above what their predecessors launched at. The ‌Mac mini‌ rose from $599 to $799 in May, and the M4 Pro configuration went from $1,399 to $1,599 in June, both as a consequence of the memory shortage driven by AI demand. Education pricing brings the new models down to $799 and $1,599 respectively.

What Changed Across Both Models

A number of upgrades apply equally to the standard and Pro configurations, regardless of which chip you choose:

‌Mac mini‌ (2024)	‌Mac mini‌ (2026)
	Neural Accelerators in each GPU core
	Variable refresh rate and HDR support
Wi-Fi 6E connectivity	Wi-Fi 7 connectivity
	Apple N1 wireless networking chip
Bluetooth 5.3	Bluetooth 6
	Thread networking technology
Gigabit Ethernet or 10Gb Ethernet	2.5Gb Ethernet or 10Gb Ethernet
	Genlock support over USB-C

Mac Mini With M4 vs. M6

Here is everything else that differs between the M4 and M6 versions of the ‌Mac mini‌:

‌Mac mini‌ (M4)	‌Mac mini‌ (M6)
M4 chip	M6 chip
10-core CPU with four performance cores and six efficiency cores	12-core CPU with two super cores, four performance cores, and six efficiency cores
10-core GPU	12-core GPU
16-core Neural Engine	Dual 16-core Neural Engine
120GB/s memory bandwidth	153GB/s memory bandwidth, rising to 170GB/s with 24GB or 32GB of unified memory
Two displays up to 6K at 60Hz, plus a third up to 5K at 60Hz	Two displays up to 6K at 60Hz or 4K at 165Hz, plus a third up to 5K at 60Hz
	Up to two external displays over a single Thunderbolt port
Now discontinued	From $899

Mac Mini With M4 Pro vs. M5 Pro

The comparison below outlines the remaining differences between the two Pro configurations:

‌Mac mini‌ (M4 Pro)	‌Mac mini‌ (M5 Pro)
M4 Pro chip	M5 Pro chip
Base: 12-core CPU with eight performance cores and four efficiency cores Configurable to: 14-core CPU	Base: 15-core CPU with five super cores and 10 performance cores Configurable to: 18-core CPU
	Enhanced shader core and third-generation ray tracing
273GB/s memory bandwidth	307GB/s memory bandwidth
Three displays up to 6K at 60Hz	Three displays up to 6K at 60Hz or 4K at 165Hz
Two displays: one up to 8K at 60Hz or 4K at 240Hz, plus a second up to 6K at 60Hz	Two displays: one up to 8K at 60Hz, 5K at 120Hz, or 4K at 240Hz, plus a second up to 5K at 120Hz or 4K at 200Hz
	Up to three external displays over a single Thunderbolt port
Now discontinued	From $1,699

How Much Faster Is It, Really?

The latest refresh is minor for ordinary work and significant for AI workflows. Against the M4, Apple claims 40% faster CPU performance and 2x faster graphics, which is a normal generational step, alongside unusually large gains of up to 4x faster AI performance and up to 4.8x faster prompt processing in LM Studio. Almost all of the engineering appears to have gone into AI optimization, in the form of Neural Accelerators built into every GPU core for the first time on the ‌Mac mini‌ and a Neural Engine doubled to two 16-core units. The M5 Pro follows the same pattern, at up to 4x faster than the M4 Pro for prompt processing but only 1.4x faster for ray-traced rendering in Blender.

Display support is the one significant change beyond the chips. Both models add 4K at 165Hz and variable refresh rate, which the 2024 machines never supported, and the M5 Pro can drive a second display at 5K at 120Hz where the M4 Pro capped it at 6K at 60Hz. If you own a high refresh rate monitor, this is perhaps the most noticeable difference in the entire update.

It is worth noting that Apple's figure of up to 170GB/s for the M6 only applies to the 24GB and 32GB configurations. The 16GB models run at 153GB/s, so the gain over the M4's 120GB/s is around 28% for many buyers rather than the 42% implied. Bandwidth governs how fast a model's weights move out of memory, which makes the 32GB configuration a faster machine.

The memory ceilings are also not the increases they appear to be. The M4 shipped with a 32GB option and the M4 Pro with 64GB when they launched in October 2024, and Apple removed both in May as memory prices climbed. The new models restore those ceilings rather than raising them, so a 32GB M4 or 64GB M4 Pro already has the same ceiling as its 2026 equivalent.

Which to Choose?

If you own a 2024 ‌Mac mini‌ and do not run AI models on it, skip this generation. A 40% CPU improvement is not something you will notice in daily use, and nothing else meaningful about the machine has changed. The exception is display support: if you have a high refresh rate monitor stuck at 60Hz, that is a real problem the new models solve and the old ones never will.

If you do run models locally, the upgrade is easy to justify from an M4, but more difficult from an M4 Pro. Roughly 4x faster prompt processing changes what you can attempt. From an M4 Pro you get unchanged GPU core counts, a 12% bandwidth increase, and a $300 rise over what you paid, so wait for the next year's revision unless you specifically need to upgrade to a 64GB model.

For new buyers, the gap between the two 2026 models is wider than the $800 price difference suggests: the M5 Pro has 80% more memory bandwidth, double the memory ceiling, and 50% more CPU cores at the top. Since tools like LM Studio and Ollama run on the GPU rather than the Neural Engine, capacity and bandwidth are what matter. Memory capacity decides which models you can load at all, while bandwidth determines how fast they run. If your models fit in 32GB, buy the M6 at $899. If they do not, the M5 Pro is your only option here.

The 2024 models remain worth considering even though Apple has stopped selling them new, with availability via third parties, Apple's refurbished store, or second-hand.

Do not expect prices to collapse in the usual way, whichever route you take. The memory shortage pushed Apple's prices up, twice during the M4's final year, so a modest discount off $799 is unremarkable. The M4 model is worth buying nearer the $599 it launched at, and much above that, the stretch to buy a new M6 is difficult to argue against.

The 32GB M4 and 64GB M4 Pro were only sold between October 2024 and May 2026, so they exist on the used market but were unavailable new for the machine's final months. A 64GB M4 Pro matches the memory ceiling of a $1,699 M5 Pro at 273GB/s against 307GB/s, for considerably less. For running larger models on a budget, that may be the most cost-effective configuration.

The new ‌Mac mini‌ is available to pre-order now, with deliveries and in-store availability beginning on Tuesday, September 22.
This article, "2024 vs. 2026 Mac Mini Buyer's Guide" first appeared on MacRumors.com

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Apple may be considering scrapping the standard iPhone 18 entirely and rebranding the iPhone Air 2 as its new $999 entry point when the more affordable iPhone models launch in spring 2027, a sketchy rumor claims.


The claim comes from the X account "Early Apple," who said Apple is "exploring the idea" of having the Air 2 simply take over the ‌iPhone 18‌ name and price point rather than launching as a separate device.

This would be a major break from how the two devices have been described up to now. Over a year's worth of rumors have consistently portrayed the standard ‌iPhone 18‌, the iPhone 18e, and the Air 2 as three separate devices set to launch together next spring, following the iPhone 18 Pro models and Apple's first foldable iPhone arriving later this month. Given how firmly that three way split has held up in the rumor cycle so far, a rebrand this drastic looks unlikely for 2027.

We have covered leaks from the account before, including an alleged ‌iPhone 18 Pro‌ prototype photo back in April, but as we noted at the time, Early Apple is a relatively new account of unknown origin with no established track record, so the claim is best treated as an informed guess. The rumor has gained some traction online, so we have covered it for the sake of completeness.

The broader idea isn't entirely new, though. Other observers such as leaker Jon Prosser raised a similar possibility months ago, suggesting Apple's ultra-thin design could eventually become the template for the standard iPhone rather than remaining a separate niche model, framing it as a longer term shift rather than something arriving as soon as next spring.

There is a reasonable case for some convergence over time, even if next year is too soon. Apple has a history of debuting design features on pricier models before trickling down to the standard iPhone in later years, and with the ‌iPhone Air‌ 2 expected to close the gap by adding a second rear camera, one of the biggest practical differences between the Air and the standard iPhone would disappear. That makes it plausible that a future standard iPhone could eventually resemble the Air, even if an outright merger during the upcoming product cycle remains a stretch.

Apple is expected to announce the ‌iPhone 18 Pro‌, ‌iPhone 18 Pro‌ Max, and its first foldable iPhone tomorrow, with the standard ‌iPhone 18‌, iPhone 18e, and Air 2 following in spring 2027.
This article, "iPhone Air 2 Could Replace iPhone 18, Sketchy Rumor Claims" first appeared on MacRumors.com

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