The News

Apple’s new iPhones, hardware double down on Apple-yness

Thin (with curves), fit and expensive were the themes of this year’s Apple “awe-dropping” hardware event. We got a new iPhone, updated designs, new features across most product lines and surprisingly little AI chat — which was a nice change for a tech event in 2025. If you want to dive into everything that happened, the Verge has the best liveblog, WIRED has a good overall wrap and EFTM has Aussie prices.

My take is that it feels like Apple is playing it safe by leaning into its Appley-ness with these product updates. Here are my notes::

• Phones: Apple launched its iPhone Air which has traded thinness for some battery life and camera quality. I am going to reserve my thoughts until I hold it because I am not sure how much a slightly thinner phone matters when most phones are already pretty thin lol. The Air, as well as the iPhone and iPhone Max, got the new “camera bar” (not bump says Apple) and, below that, a ceramic cut-out below which gives it a neat two-tone design. Also interesting: all the new iPhones use Apple’s own N1 chip for wi-fi, Bluetooth etc (Ars Technica).

• Headphones: The event kicked off with new AirPod Pro 3 which now have a heart rate monitor and can do live language translation. I loved my OG AirPods Pro (until I lost them in a playground) so I wouldn’t mind picking up a pair of these.

• Watches: All the watches are getting a spec bump, but I was most intrigued by the spenny Ultra 3 which now has a satellite SOS connectivity and 42 (!) hour battery life. That’s really getting to the “I’m not stressed that I need to charge it every night” zone.

• Accessories: Apple’s also dropping a “Crossbody Strap” if you want to wear your phone (9to5Mac) and an external MagSafe battery so you can make your iPhone Air as fat as the normal iPhone lol (The Verge).
  
  Sadly, though, no update for the polishing cloth…

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

BOM. HAS. HTTPS.

It’s happening. In fact, it’s already here. Our long national nightmare is over.

The Bureau of Meteorology website now supports HTTPS!!!!!!!!!!!

For the better part of a decade, BOM’s website has politely told people trying to access its HTTPS version that it does not support it (Reddit). Why doesn’t Australia’s government body for weather support a very basic web standard? No idea! Last year, BOM’s new website beta launched with HTTPS (TechAU).

And now, I am so so so so so proud to share that you can bloody fang in https://www.bom.gov.au and it works!!!!! This is so big I was tempted to lead the edition with this, ahead of Apple.

A BOM spokesperson confirmed to me that “as part of our preparations to transition to the new website https://beta.bom.gov.au/ the Bureau of Meteorology is enabling HTTPS security protocol and current security certificates on many of the bom.gov.au pages.“

(https://bom.gov.au/ still doesn’t work but baby steps, I guess!).

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Judge rejects $2.3B AI author payout over concerns its actually not fair enough to authors

A US judge gave a thumbs down to a historic AU$2.3 billion copyright payout from AI company Anthropic to the authors of 500,000 books used to train its AI over concerns that the settlement was going to be a dog’s breakfast (Bloomberg Law, $). Judge William Alsupp told both sides to refile their agreement to pay authors $3,000 per book because there were “important questions” about the number of authors that would get pay-outs, the process for claiming them, and the low rate per book.

The Sizzle: The news that Anthropic was on the hook to authors for $2.3 billion got mixed reviews: some people thought it was a piddly amount for a company worth $230B, whereas others were just surprised authors were getting anything. I didn’t expect the judge to reject what would’ve been the largest copyright class action payout ever, but he seems to have good, pro-author reasons for doing so. (Although there is a little voice in my head that wonders whether this might end up backfiring if the Trump administration introduces a “fuck copyright train on whatever you want” directive).

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Leftovers

• Veterans' Affairs trials AI-enabled search (iTnews)

• Canva and Atlassian say AI not to blame for staff departures (The Australian Financial Review, $)

• Atlassian will go cloud-only, urges on-prem customers onto AWS or Azure (The Register) as noted by some Sizzlers!

• Controversial US data miner Palantir reappears in Victoria’s prison system (Capital Brief, $)

• A Fair Work Commission judgment where someone quoted ChatGPT’s output, but didn’t take its advice to seek a lawyer or speak to a union. It didn’t go well (PDF)

• Reddit bug caused lesbian subreddit to be labeled as a place for ‘straight ‘women (Ars Technica)

• How ICE Is Using Fake Cell Towers To Spy On People’s Phones (Forbes, $)

• Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office. Read the memo (Business Insider, $)

• US sanctions cyber-scammers who stole billions from Americans (BleepingComputer)

• I don’t want AI agents controlling my laptop (SophieBits)

• Google Cloud chief details how tech company is monetizing AI (CNBC) I’m including this because I find this to be a very weird article

Well, I guess that’s one way to make money from AI

Discuss these links in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Oh, Also

Meet 'Hairy Creature', 'Distorted Face' and the other new emojis

Speaking of annual events: the Unicode consortium’s yearly release of new emojis rarely disappoints — and this year’s cohort is no exception (Jennifer Daniel on Substack). Unicode 17.0 includes some real bangers including “Hairy Creature” and “Fight Cloud” (Unicode Blog). It does take a little while for various systems to update to display the characters, so it’s probably about six months until you can start spamming that mfing “Distorted Face” in the chat.

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Bargains

Electrical & electronics

• Super Slim Powerbank Fast Charge 6000mAh, High-Speed Dual USB-A - $19.90 at easintpl eBay AU

• Creative Auvarna Ace 2 - $119 at Creative Labs Amazon AU

• Sennheiser Accentum Wireless Over-Ear Headphones - $149 at Sennheiser eBay

• TCL 55" C7K Premium QD-Mini LED 4K Google TV - $888 at Appliance Central

Computing

• Logitech G203 Lightsync Gaming Mouse (All Colours) - $35 at Officeworks (Down from $69)

• Samsung T9 1TB USB Portable External SSD - Black 2,000MB/s - $216 at Kiwi Teck eBay (Down from $289)

• Samsung M8 M80F 32" 4K UHD Vision AI Smart Monitor + LR43 Battery - $630 at Samsung eBay AU

• Gaming PC: RX 9070 XT 16GB, Ryzen 9800X3D 32GB DDR5, 850W Gold PSU, 1TB NVME - $2399 at Radium PCs

Mobile

• CMF Phone 1 8GB/128GB Black - $240 at Amazon DE via AU

The End

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The Sizzle is created on Gadigal land and acknowledges the traditional owners of country throughout Australia, recognising their continuing connection to land, water and community. I pay my respect to them and their cultures and to elders both past and present.