After a ten-month investigation, the Competition and Markets Authority has designated Apple and Google’s mobile platforms with “strategic market status,” describing them as having “substantial, entrenched market power.” The companies now face extra anti-competition regulations in the UK, following a similar ruling for Google Search.
iOS
iOS is Apple’s operating system for the iPhone and iPad. It’s also the basis for tvOS for the Apple TV and watchOS for the Apple Watch. It’s even beginning to infiltrate the Mac in some ways. Apple has worked hard to keep iOS private and secure, and it has a huge ecosystem of apps via its official App Store. Some have argued that it is too locked down, but the trade-off is that it’s fast and stable for most users.


The newest iOS 26.1 developer beta forces you to slide to stop the alarm instead of mashing a button. This makes a lot of sense to me and I hope Apple keeps it in the final release, though I may regret saying that when I want to sleep more.


The free iOS app is now available to download worldwide today, following its announcement earlier this month, bringing Premiere Pro editing features to mobile devices. An Android version is also in development, but Adobe hasn’t said when it will arrive.
There are fixes for bugs that some new iPhone 17 / Pro / Air owners have noticed, like wonky Wi-Fi and Bluetooth radios, as well as camera artifacts experienced “under certain lighting conditions.”
One iOS 26 issue addressed is blank custom tinted icons, plus one security flaw for a “maliciously crafted font.”


Apple has updated its iOS 26 website to say that a planned feature that lets you make a digital ID using your US passport will arrive sometime this year, MacRumors reports.
Android users can finally (it only took them 17 years!!!) mark emails as read directly from the Gmail notification, clearing the alert at the same time. Meanwhile iPhone notifications now include the sender’s picture, another bafflingly basic feature Gmail hasn’t offered until now.



But most people should buy the regular iPhone 17.
With the launch of iOS 26, Apple planned to let you create a digital ID with your US passport and store it in its Wallet app, allowing you to pass through TSA checkpoints while traveling within the country. Now, Apple says this feature will be “available in a software update,” as spotted by MacRumors.

Apple’s new cross-platform design system is created for a world we don’t live in.
Ahead of iOS 26 officially launching on September 15th, the release candidate was made available yesterday and includes a new feature that will automatically change the color of your home screen icons to match your colored Apple MagSafe case, as spotted by MacRumors.


Wabetainfo says the WhatsApp for iOS beta 25.24.10.72 update adds support for Live Photos in chats, groups, and channels, after rolling out similar support for motion photos on Android last month. Users can decide whether to send them as a still image or the original dynamic clip.


I just verified it for myself and, yup — if you keep scrolling, you’ll eventually hit bottom.




On Monday, Apple released the sixth developer beta of iOS 26 which includes six new ringtones. Five of them are new variations of the Reflection ringtone — currently the iPhone’s default option — with names like Buoyant, Dreamer, Pond, Pop, Surge, and Reflected, which was carried over from previous betas and renamed.
There’s also an entirely new ringtone called Little Bird that’s destined to become an earworm and is begging to be remixed into a real banger.







You get a window. And you get a window. And you get a window.
The company has some criticisms of the Competition and Markets Authority’s roadmaps of “potential actions to improve competition” for Apple and Google, and Epic now says it “can’t bring the Epic Games Store to iOS in the UK this year (if ever).”
Epic originally aimed to bring the store and Fortnite to iOS in the UK in the second half of 2025.
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has proposed giving them “strategic market status” for iOS and Android, since over 90 percent of UK mobile devices run either OS.
It took the CMA since January to figure out what the EU did two years ago, and somehow it’s not done yet — it’ll take until October to confirm the proposal, around the same time it will “begin consulting” on its roadmaps to rein the two in.



























