The iPhone 15 lineup has arrived, and here’s everything you need to know

Some Mac, iPhone, and iPad gamers will finally be able to play as postapocalyptic Norman Reedus in Death Stranding Director’s Cut on January 30th. Only iPhone 15 Pro models and Macs or iPads equipped with Apple’s M-series chips can run the $39.99 game, though. At the moment, preorders are 50 percent off at $19.99, and pleasantly, it’s a universal purchase, so you only have to buy it once to play it on multiple platforms.

Hideo Kojima announced the release of this director’s cut for Macs at WWDC 2023 as part of a new push from Apple to highlight the potential of gaming on Apple Silicon devices, while Apple announced the iPhone 15 Pro port during its Wonderlust iPhone launch event in September. Like other versions of the game released in 2021, it comes with exclusive content like a “dangerous underground factory,” “expanded story missions,” and new “delivery assists like cargo catapults and a newly-added stabilizer function.” It also gets some items from Half-Life and Cyberpunk 2077.

Belkin has a new 2-in-1 charging dock that’s all about the looks. Yes, it offers the types of features you’d expect from a $129.95 charger, including letting you fast charge iPhones with MagSafe as well as Apple Watches. But if you do pay up for the new charging dock, you’re probably buying it because it looks great.

Offered in two neutral colors, sand or charcoal (basically white and black), “the dock achieves a stunning stone-like appearance, blending seamlessly into its environment whether it’s placed on a nightstand, kitchen counter or desk,” Belkin writes in its press release. Take Belkin’s marketing language there with a grain of salt, but I do think the charger has a really nice aesthetic.

Apple has released the developer beta of iOS 17.2, and it includes the Journal app, a digital daily diary for users to log their activities.

The Journal app was first announced at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in June, and the company frames it as a way for users to self-reflect and practice gratitude.

Apple has officially released iOS 17.1, the latest version of its iPhone operating system. The update has been available in beta since late last month, during which time its biggest new feature has arguably been the ability to continue AirDrop transfers over a cellular connection if the two connected devices move out of Wi-Fi range after the sending process has started. Apple announced the feature back at its developer conference in June, but it didn’t arrive in time for the main iOS 17 release last month.

As shown in iOS 17.1’s beta releases, the update includes a handful of other minor tweaks and additions. There’s a new Favorites feature for Apple Music that lets you add songs, albums, playlists, and artists to your library and signal your music tastes to the app’s recommendation algorithms, and the settings menu for the StandBy feature has been tweaked to give you more control over when the phone’s display turns off when used in this smart display mode.

Over the weekend, Apple blamed several factors for reports of iPhone 15s running hot, pointing to problems with specific apps like Instagram and Uber, post-transfer background processing, and unspecified bugs in iOS 17. Today, the company released a new software update with patch notes saying that iOS 17.0.3 “addresses an issue that may cause iPhone to run warmer than expected.”

In an update detailing the security fixes for this patch, Apple listed two fixes addressed on both iOS and iPadOS (via 9to5Mac). One is a kernel exploit for an attacker with local access to the device that Apple said “may have been actively exploited against versions of iOS before iOS 16.6,” as well as a fix for a libvpx bug — which CISA issued a warning about — that could allow someone to take over a device remotely, that has also been patched recently in apps like Chrome and Firefox.

Apple has acknowledged user complaints that iPhone 15 and 15 Pro phones are overheating, reports Forbes, but said that contrary to speculation, it has nothing to do with the phone’s hardware design. Forbes noted an update to Instagram has already rolled out with version 302, released September 27th, to address some of the issues.

Bloomberg notes an unnamed Apple spokesperson specifically mentioning Instagram, Uber, and the game Asphalt 9 as examples of apps that could cause the devices to “run warmer than normal.”

If you’ve just picked up a new iPhone 15 device, before you transfer over your data from an older phone, make sure to update that new phone to iOS 17.0.2 first. An Apple support document says that the update, which came out on Thursday, fixes an issue that “may prevent transferring data directly from another iPhone during setup” (via MacRumors).

Initially, iOS 17.0.2 was only available for the just-launched iPhone 15 phones; the most current software for older iPhones available last week was iOS 17.0.1, which also launched on Thursday and included some big security updates. On September 26th, 9to5Mac reported that Apple released a new build of 17.0.2 with the same release notes available for all iPhones capable of running the current software.

Apple just released macOS Sonoma, and along with the new 14.0 version of its operating system, there’s an update for its standalone Studio Display monitor that addresses some of our issues with its much-derided webcam (via MacRumors). Now, the Studio Display’s camera offers manual control over framing and zoom, which you can adjust by moving the image back and forth or in and out within the video preview window.

From Apple’s update notes:

While Apple may have made the iPhone 15 Pro Max easier to repair physically, a teardown from iFixit reveals it still comes with the same parts pairing constraints as its predecessors.

Like the iPhone 14, iFixit found that the iPhone 15 lineup has a redesigned midframe that you can access by removing the device’s screen or back glass. However, iFixit notes that the internals on the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max live behind the screen, rather than the back glass, as is the case with the base iPhone 15 and 15 Plus as well as the iPhone 14 lineup.

If you want to hear a love story, ask any photographer about their favorite lens. 

They’ll probably get a little glimmer in their eye as they tell you about the fast 35mm they carry everywhere or the long portrait lens with the bokeh that hits just right. Camera bodies come and go, but your favorite lens is a lifelong relationship.

“The new FineWoven iPhone cases are very bad,” according to my colleague Allison Johnson, so you probably shouldn’t buy one. Still, I’ve been curious to learn more about them, and iFixit’s new teardown just gave me even more information than I could have thought to ask for: it put one of the new cases under a microscope, tested how it stood up to things like hot sauce and coffee, and tore the thing apart — and, best of all, photographed every step of the way.

There are some incredible zoomed-in photos of the fabric, for example; that black thing in a post from iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens is a human hair included for scale! Another photo shows how the fibers are affected when cut by a knife — it’s not pretty.

There are very few surprises from new smartphones these days. Breakthrough new features? Astounding new camera hardware? Get out of here. That’s the stuff of early 2010 mobile technology.

The iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max are no exception to recent trends: they’re not seismic shifts; they’re just a bit better than the things that came before them in a lot of small but meaningful ways. 

Did you hear the iPhone 15 has USB-C now? That’s a great thing and long overdue, but it does mean that there will be a period of transition where some of us end up having to deal with both Lightning and USB-C iPhones in our lives, particularly if we live with someone who isn’t buying the new iPhone right away.

This is particularly cumbersome if you share a vehicle and want to use CarPlay in it — you’ll need a way to hook up your new USB-C iPhone and maintain a Lightning connection for the other person using the car. You could do this with multiple cables, of course, and switch it every time you get in the car, but who needs that hassle? For the past couple of years, I’ve used this three-headed cable to use Apple CarPlay and Android Auto in the same vehicle, depending on who is driving, no cable swap necessary. (It also comes with a Micro USB port on one side, but I can’t say I’ve ever used it.)

As excited as I am to pick up a new iPhone 15 Pro Max later today, every release day for Apple’s latest phones brings back a nagging feeling: I still miss 3D Touch. Introduced on the iPhone 6S and lasting through the XS and XS Max, this feature could determine how much pressure you were applying to the screen with each finger press, and software could respond differently based on the level of force.

I remember having my mind blown by the live wallpaper animations, which would play (and then rewind back in reverse) based on how hard or softly I was pressing down. 3D Touch also brought other useful tricks like “peek” and “pop,” which let you preview a link or other content with a light press and then fully open it with a firm one.