Apple

People are rushing to buy Apple’s iPhone 17, but it’s probably not because of the iPhone 17

More people went to Apple’s website when preorders for the new iPhone began than have since 2022.

9/19/25 9:19AM

Apple’s iPhone 17 went on sale today and it looks like it might be a relative hit. That might not have much to do with the iPhone 17 itself.

More people turned up for Apple’s online iPhone 17 event earlier this month than have since 2022, according to data shared with Sherwood News by digital market intelligence company Similarweb. The same goes for traffic a few days later, when the phone became available for preorder, suggesting more people might be buying a new iPhone during the preorder period than have in three years.

At the event, Apple unveiled a new slimmer iPhone Air as well as a basic iPhone and an iPhone Pro with faster chips, along with better cameras and larger displays. Apple didn’t mention much about AI, but Apple’s rollout of AI has been spotty at best.

However, people don’t really buy new iPhones because of new features or incremental hardware improvements. Instead, the main driver of iPhone upgrades is because someone’s old phone is obsolete or broken or its battery just doesn’t last as long as it used to.

And 2025 happens to be a big year for older iPhones. That’s because during the early years of the pandemic, Apple experienced a “supercycle” of iPhone upgrades as people trapped at home with extra cash shelled out for new tech.

2020 and 2021 also coincided with natural upgrade cycles, as many had been holding on to their previous iPhones like the iPhone 6 for years at that point. Some had been waiting for a 5G phone as well, which Apple rolled out in 2020, so it was as good a time as any for a new phone.

Here we are, four or five years later, and the people who upgraded in 2020 and 2021 are likely dealing with shorter battery life, smashed screens, and all the other annoyances of old phones.

Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives recently estimated that “315 million iPhone users of 1.5 billion users worldwide have not upgraded their phones in over 4 years speaking to an upgrade opportunity on the horizon for Cupertino with China front and center.”

That’s good for Apple, but it doesn’t mean it’s because of anything Apple in particular has done.

Chris Stokel-Walker

Bot bias

6/17/26

Companies are getting AI chatbots to smear their competitors

The race to influence AI chatbots is leading to some companies to adopt shady competitive tactics.

Tom Jones6/17/26

Prediction markets have, predictably, been given a boost by the summer of sports

Major platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket have seen huge upticks in users of late, thanks in no small part to what’s felt like a recent sporting smorgasbord, with major competitions across hockey, basketball, and soccer soaking up fans’ time (and spending, clearly) at the outset of summer.

While gaming industry groups may not like it, there’s been a huge change in the methods people are using to put money on the big games, with everyone from fortunate NYC bar owners, to a far less fortunate Spanish supporter, turning to prediction markets to try and turn their sports know-how into cold, hard cash.

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

2026 World Cup Reverses Seasonal Lull for Sports Betting Apps

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

South by Southwest Conference and Festivals

Gold Tesla Cybercabs are piling up, but they’re not picking up passengers yet

Low-volume production started in April. Now people are noticing them more and more in the wild.

Rani Molla6/15/26

Millie Giles

TAKING ACCOUNTS

6/15/26

Britain announces social media ban for under-16s starting early 2027

The UK government plans to use the same model for the restrictions as Australia — but how successful has that case study been so far?

UK Prime Minister Announces Under-16s Social Media Ban

Jon Keegan6/15/26

Anthropic pulls Fable and Mythos access worldwide after Trump administration bars their use by foreign nationals

Only days after releasing two versions of its next-gen AI model, Anthropic has disabled them for users worldwide.

Anthropic says it received a Friday night order from the Trump administration to suspend access to the models for any foreign national (anywhere in the world) — a group that included some Anthropic employees. In response, the company turned off access to everyone.

Last week, the company released to the public its much-anticipated Claude Fable 5 model (and its restricted version Claude Mythos 5, which is still being tested with trusted partners). Anthropic said in a blog post announcing the action that officials cited national security concerns with the new models, while offering few specific details.

The post said that the government gave the company “verbal evidence of a potential narrow, non-universal jailbreak” of the public Fable 5 model. A jailbreak is a means by which users can evade restrictions built into the code to unlock prohibited functionality. Anthropic downplayed the significance of the attack, and said other major models, such as OpenAI’s GPT-5.5, could also be affected by the technique described.

Fears of these first Mythos-class models being misused are running high, after Anthropic warned the cybersecurity world in May that the advanced cyber capabilities of Mythos have rapidly discovered thousands of vulnerabilities in ubiquitous software, leading to the decision to restrict the full version of the model to a close group of trusted partners for testing.

This morning, Axios reported that Anthropic technical staff have flown to Washington to meet with White House officials to resolve the issue.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Trump administration’s decision to take action against Anthropic was prompted by discussions that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy had with officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. According to the report, Amazon researchers said they had been able to evade some of Fable 5’s security restrictions using specific prompts. Amazon is a major investor in Anthropic.

Anthropic is currently suing the US government to fight the Pentagon’s blacklisting of the company on national security grounds.

Statement on the US government directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5