By most accounts, HIGH END Vienna 2026 was a success, and that is no small thing for an industry that could use some good news as we begin the slow crawl into summer. The move from Munich to Vienna was always going to be scrutinized, second-guessed, and overanalyzed by people who spend too much time arguing about cable elevators, but the first edition in Austria appears to have landed well. The rooms were busy, the product pipeline was stronger than expected, and manufacturers showed up with enough new hardware to suggest that high-end audio may finally be catching some tailwinds again.
Good. The industry needs them.
There are already five more shows on the calendar between now and September: T.H.E. Show SoCal, CanJam London, Audio Advice Live 2026, CanJam SoCal, and CEDIA. Audio Advice Live has become a more important stop this year, and I will be joining Chris Boylan in Raleigh in early August rather than covering SWAF in Dallas in late-July.
At some point, even editors need to recharge the batteries, spend time with their kids, clean up the house, paint a few walls, and fix whatever winter broke before summer arrives to break something else. The Jersey Shore is already preparing for its annual stress test: Netflix Studios construction, World Cup traffic threatening to paralyze half the Garden State, and the return of the Bennies, who descend every year like a seasonal weather event with beach chairs, parking issues, and questionable lane discipline.
So yes, I’m thinking very carefully about how to manage the rest of 2026 starting in late-July.
That is especially true when eCoustics is on pace for roughly 1,200 articles, videos, and podcasts in 2026. That puts us behind only What Hi-Fi? in terms of output, and well ahead of most of the specialist audio press. That kind of schedule is not powered by Austrian pastries and blind optimism. It takes planning, travel, editing, late nights, and a team willing to do the unglamorous work that most readers never really notice.
Nobody works harder than this team, and the addition of Al Griffin, Chris Chiarella, and Ryan Waniata in 2026 has only made it stronger.
Editor-at-Large, Chris Boylan will have more to say in his Best of Show report, along with more video reports from HIGH END Vienna dropping this week. My focus here is slightly different. These are the 11 new products from the show that most caught my attention, the ones I most want to review when they become available, and the products that say something meaningful about where the market may be headed next.
Because there is a bigger point here.
The audio industry may be finding some momentum again, but it still needs to learn how to market itself without tripping over the same gold-plated rake. Not every new product is a “new reference.”
Arnold Schwarzenegger once said, “The worst thing I can be is the same as everybody else.” For the hi-fi industry, that might be the most useful Austrian export of the week. HIGH END Vienna 2026 proved there is still life in the category, but the brands that matter going forward will be the ones willing to stop sounding, looking, pricing, and marketing themselves exactly like everyone else.
The Acoustic Energy AE Active is a fully analog active stand-mounted loudspeaker with Class A/B amplification, RCA and XLR inputs, room-trim controls, and an updated driver package that looks like a focused evolution of the AE1 Active.
That may sound almost quaint in 2026, which is precisely why I want to hear it. Most active speakers now arrive with apps, firmware updates, streaming platforms, Bluetooth logos, and enough software baggage to make you wonder whether you bought loudspeakers or adopted a small IT department. Acoustic Energy has gone in the other direction: wired inputs, analog signal path, onboard amplification, and a very clear focus on the box, the drivers, and the amplifier doing their jobs properly. Radical stuff, apparently.
I want to hear whether Acoustic Energy has improved on the AE1 Active without sanding down the speed, impact, and immediacy that made the original such a compelling compact loudspeaker. The real test will be placement, bass control, tonal balance at sane listening levels, and whether the room-trim controls are actually useful in smaller spaces, and not just switches added to make the rear panel look busy.
The other part of the review is the use case. The AE Active has a very limited number of inputs, so I want to hear how it interacts with the preamp sections in a range of network players and DAC/preamps. If the source/preamp pairing matters, and with active loudspeakers, it usually does — that needs to be part of the review, not an afterthought buried somewhere between “nice imaging” and “good for desktop use.”
The Klipsch Rebellion is a premium Heritage-inspired standmount loudspeaker based on Paul W. Klipsch’s rare 1958 H8 design, using a K-702 tweeter mounted to a K-703 Tractrix horn with Mumps technology, a new K-81-EP woofer, and a rear Tractrix flare port.
Klipsch has been leaning hard into its 80th anniversary, and the Rebellion is far more interesting to me than another nostalgia badge glued to a walnut box. It is not cheap at $2,599 per pair, but the idea of a compact Heritage-flavored Klipsch loudspeaker that does not require La Scala real estate or a second mortgage has real appeal. The category needs speakers with high sensitivity, dynamics, personality, and some actual fun baked into the cabinet, because not everyone wants another polite rectangular box that sounds like it was voiced during a faculty meeting.
What I want to test is how flexible the Rebellion really is with amplification. On paper, this could be a very interesting match for everything from affordable Class D amplifiers like WiiM’s current crop, to older Class A/B integrated amps from NAD, Cambridge, and Rega, to tube integrated amplifiers from a wide range of manufacturers. The review has to find out whether the Rebellion keeps the Klipsch energy and immediacy without getting shouty, whether it can work in real rooms without punishing placement, and whether it has enough tonal refinement to win over listeners who like the Heritage attitude but do not want to live inside a live PA system.
The Cambridge Audio Evo 300 is a 300Wpc streaming amplifier built around Hypex NCOREx power, StreamMagic Gen 4, HDMI eARC, MM phono, and the same basic “just add speakers and stop building equipment towers” argument that has made the Evo series so compelling.
The extra power is the headline, but it is not the only thing I care about. The Evo 75, Evo 150, and Evo 150 SE never really ran out of gas with the speakers I tried them with, including models from Q Acoustics, Acoustic Energy, PSB, Focal, and others. More power is rarely a bad thing, unless we are talking about politicians or subwoofers in apartments, but the Evo platform was already more capable than some people gave it credit for.
What I want to test is whether Cambridge has actually moved the amplifier section forward, not just added a bigger number to the brochure. Does the Hypex NCOREx implementation sound cleaner, faster, and more composed than the earlier Evo models? Is StreamMagic Gen 4 easier to use day to day? Does HDMI eARC behave properly with real TVs? Does the MM phono input feel like a serious part of the product or a convenience feature? The Evo 300 needs to prove that it is not just the Evo with more horsepower, but a more complete streaming amplifier for people who want fewer boxes without lowering their standards.
The Canvas L is a premium TV-mounted active speaker system that now supports larger screen sizes, offers more finish and grille options, and uses BACCH 3D+ processing to make the case that a very serious “soundbar” can replace a conventional front-channel system.
The price has gone up. A lot. That does not automatically make it a problem, but it does move the Canvas L into a very different conversation, especially when buyers can also look at strong active loudspeakers, compact 3.0 or 3.1 systems, and increasingly ambitious lifestyle audio products from brands with serious hi-fi credibility. The ability to pair it with larger TVs makes sense because that is where the market has gone, and I like the grille options because not everyone wants their living room to look like a demo room at an audio show staffed by people named Lars.
Can the Canvas L can actually replace a proper 3.0 or 3.1 system through output, tonal scale, dialogue clarity, center image stability, and BACCH 3D+ spatial processing — especially because there is no separate subwoofer in the system. I was a guinea pig for the original BACCH work at the lab in Princeton and at the designer’s home, and I have wanted this technology to work properly in a real consumer product for probably eight or nine years. The review has to answer the uncomfortable question: is this finally the elegant living-room solution that can satisfy movie and music listeners, or is it still asking too much from one very expensive box attached to a television?
The DALI VEGA is a $4,500 single-box wireless hi-fi system with ten in-house-developed drivers, 400 watts of Class D amplification, BluOS streaming, HDMI ARC, AirPlay 2, TIDAL Connect, Spotify Connect, and adaptive processing that lets it work horizontally or vertically.
This type of system is becoming a real category, and I am perfectly fine with that. Products like the VEGA, Focal’s Mu-so Hekla, Canvas L, LIVEBOX, and Ruark’s larger all-in-one console systems are forcing people to pay attention because they are not just Bluetooth speakers with better tailoring. They are aimed at people who want serious sound without separates, speaker cables, and a rack that looks like it belongs in a regional airport control room.
The Naim influence is obvious; sorry, Salisbury, everyone found the big dial — but the category has moved beyond imitation. The Naim/Focal room at AXPONA 2026 was standing-room-only primarily because of the Mu-so Hekla demo, and people were not pretending to be impressed. They were impressed.
What I want to test is whether the VEGA can work as well in real rooms as it does on paper. The Adaptive Orientation Adjustment is not a gimmick if it can make the system sound convincing both horizontally on furniture and vertically on a wall, but that has to be tested with real placement compromises, not a brochure-perfect room with one chair and no family members. The dog can stay.
I want to hear whether DALI’s Adaptive Stereo Enhancement creates real width and scale without turning everything into processed vapor, whether the bass has enough weight without getting thick, and whether BluOS, HDMI ARC, presets, EQ, wall-distance adjustment, and that rather lovely control dial make the VEGA feel like a proper living-room hi-fi system rather than another expensive lifestyle object asking for Scandinavian forgiveness.
The Eversolo DMP-A8 Gen 2 is a digital hub that combines streaming, DAC, preamp, local music-server functionality, internal SSD support, HDMI ARC, subwoofer control, balanced analog outputs, AKM DAC architecture, Wi-Fi 6, and SFP fiber networking in one very polished box.
Eversolo has become a serious player in network audio because its products usually offer strong hardware, useful software, and a feature set that makes some more expensive streamers look a little thin. The original DMP-A8 already made a strong case as a flexible digital front end, so the Gen 2 is interesting because it appears to refine the platform rather than reinvent it. The move to AKM, the addition of SFP fiber networking, broader system-control features, and continued emphasis on local storage all suggest Eversolo understands that many listeners want one digital component that can handle streaming, files, TV audio, and preamp duties.
What I want to test is whether the DMP-A8 Gen 2 improves the parts that matter in daily use. Does the AKM-based DAC architecture change the tonal balance or presentation in a meaningful way? Is the preamp section good enough to drive active speakers or a serious power amplifier without making a dedicated preamp feel mandatory? Does SFP fiber networking offer a practical benefit in a real home network, or is it mostly there for the people who already own three Ethernet switches and strong opinions about optical isolation?
The Meze Audio ARTA is a $6,000 open-back flagship headphone built around a new 225-ohm Rinaro Isodynamic Hybrid Array driver, with the kind of industrial design, materials, and Romanian craftsmanship that have become central to Meze’s identity.
Having owned the Empyrean II for a few years, I can attest to how good Meze can be when it gets the balance right. The Empyrean II is brilliant from both a design and performance perspective: comfortable, beautifully made, musically generous, and far more than a piece of headphone jewelry for people who alphabetize their cables. That is why the ARTA interests me, but also why the price gives me pause. At $6,000, it is walking straight into the same rarefied air occupied by statement headphones from Audeze, HiFiMAN, ZMF, and others. The question is not whether Meze can build something spectacular. It can. The question is whether the ARTA can be thousands of dollars better in ways that matter.
What I want to test is whether we are getting too close to the sun in the head-fi space. If the ARTA is spectacular, I will be thrilled, because I have invested a lot of money and professional capital in this Romanian brand and still believe Meze brings something different to the category. But spectacular is now the entry fee at this price. I want to hear whether the ARTA delivers more resolution, scale, speed, tonal sophistication, and emotional pull than the Empyrean II without losing the comfort and humanity that make Meze special.
Compared with $1 million loudspeakers, perhaps a $6,000 headphone is a bargain even after you add the amplifier, DAC, source, cables, stand, and the quiet room you apparently now need to justify listening to music by yourself.
The Questyle QMS system pairs the iXStreamer with the E5 and E4 wireless active bookshelf speakers, using SEAS drivers, Wi-Fi 6, LDAC, aptX, HDMI ARC/eARC, and Questyle’s own DAC/amplification thinking to build a more serious lossless wireless ecosystem.
This will not be cheap, and nobody should pretend otherwise. Questyle makes superb products, even if not every one of them has landed on my “Best of” list, because the company usually tries to do something different rather than just chase the same safe feature set as everyone else.
What I want to test is whether Questyle can make the system feel like real hi-fi and not just another premium wireless speaker platform. The E5, especially the Oceanic Blue co-branded SEAS version, is the one I want in for review because the concept only works if the loudspeakers deliver proper imaging, scale, tonal balance, and low-latency stability with TV, streaming, and hi-res playback.
I also want to know whether the iXStreamer actually makes the ecosystem easier to use, whether HDMI ARC/eARC behaves properly, and whether Questyle’s current-mode DNA translates into active loudspeakers without turning the whole thing into an expensive proof-of-concept for people who already own three DACs and still claim they are “simplifying.”
The Ruark R710 is a new CD hi-fi console in Ruark’s 100 Series, designed to sit above the R610 and work as a more ambitious all-in-one music system for listeners who still want CD playback, streaming, proper amplification, strong industrial design, and a system that does not require a rack of boring boxes.
I already heard the Talisman-R loudspeakers at a show, and they made a strong case for Ruark being far more than the company North American audiophiles seem determined to file under “nice radios.” But the R710 was the piece hiding in the wings, and that is the one that may tell us even more about where Ruark is headed. I have reviewed most of the brand’s recent kit, and the frustrating part is that it is consistently better than a lot of people on this side of the Atlantic seem willing to admit.
What I want to test is whether the R710 can finally make more North American listeners take Ruark seriously as a proper hi-fi brand, not just a lifestyle-audio company with good manners and better woodwork. The review needs to answer whether the R710 has enough amplifier control, scale, streaming stability, CD playback quality, and system flexibility to justify its position above the R610, especially with the Talisman-R as the obvious partner. Ruark has the design language, the usability, and the musical instincts. Now I want to know whether the R710 has the authority to make the “real audiophile gear” crowd stop smirking long enough to actually listen.
The Ruark Talisman-R is a compact two-way floorstanding loudspeaker; roughly 33.5 inches tall, rated at 87 dB sensitivity, with a 6-ohm nominal impedance that dips to 3.8 ohms, and Ruark recommends amplifiers between 50 and 250 watts.
Ruark is clearly positioning the Talisman-R as the natural partner for the new R710 CD hi-fi console, and that makes sense. But this speaker should not be treated as some locked-in accessory for one Ruark system. Those amplifier requirements open the door to a wide range of gear: modern Class D integrated amplifiers, older Class A/B amps, British integrateds with some grip and warmth, and better streaming amplifiers that need a compact floorstander with actual personality.
What I want to test is whether the Talisman-R is the Ruark product that finally makes more North American listeners stop treating the brand like a polite British radio company and start seeing it as serious hi-fi. If I had to pick a pair of speakers I am likely to buy by the end of 2026 for my new office, these, the Dynaudio Legend, and the DeVore Fidelity o/baby are the three strongest contenders. That is not a small compliment. I want to find out whether the Talisman-R has the tonal density, imaging, bass control, and amplifier flexibility to earn that spot — or whether I’m just being seduced again by British woodwork and my own terrible weakness for compact floorstanders.
The iFi iDSD GR2 is a $529 portable DAC/headphone amplifier with a Burr-Brown PCM1795 DAC, USB-C and S/PDIF inputs, 3.5mm and 4.4mm headphone outputs, Bluetooth with LDAC and aptX Lossless, iFi’s Nexis app control, and up to 1,513mW RMS into 32 ohms.
iFi has been very good at making portable DAC/amps that feel overbuilt in the right ways, but the category has become crowded, aggressive, and surprisingly good at lower prices. That makes the GR2 interesting because it has to justify itself against dongles, desktop DAC/amps, and wireless headphones that keep getting better. The price is reasonable by iFi standards, and it is lower than the outgoing xDSD Gryphon, but $529 is still real money for a device that many people will carry around, drop in a bag, and eventually panic-search for under a car seat.
What I want to test is whether the GR2 still makes sense in 2026 as a serious portable hub. Does the Burr-Brown PCM1795 implementation deliver the tonal density and smoothness iFi fans expect without getting too soft? Is the output powerful enough for more demanding headphones without turning sensitive IEMs into a hiss festival? Does Bluetooth sound good enough to be useful rather than merely convenient? And does the Nexis app, touchscreen interface, battery life, and hybrid power system make the GR2 easier to live with day to day, or is this another portable box that sounds excellent but demands the patience of someone assembling IKEA furniture in the dark?
Apple’s Game Porting Toolkit has been supercharged with AI agents, which might make it significantly easier to bring a game to the Mac.
While iOS 27 and Siri were the stars of the WWDC 2026 keynote, Apple hasn’t forgotten about the Mac as a gaming platform. While we didn’t get any triple-A game announcements this time around, the company did unveil a significant upgrade with Game Porting Toolkit 4.
The utility, as its name implies, is meant to help bring games to macOS. With the fourth release of its Game Porting Toolkit, Apple has implemented support for AI agents as part of the porting process.
“A new companion repository on Apple’s GitHub brings together open-source agent skills and sample code to help you leverage AI coding agents,” says the developer-focused announcement.
Apple’s website says that AI agents can help speed up game porting, as they offer deep Metal knowledge throughout the process. Agents are now capable of capturing, debugging, and profiling Metal workloads directly, as they now have command-line access to Metal tools.
Additionally, the evaluation environment within Game Porting Toolkit 4 now supports Metal 4, letting developers “test compatibility and performance against the latest API.”
Metal itself is hardware-dependent graphics and compute API. The original Metal framework is available on Macs as far back as 2012, while Metal 4 is only available on products with an Apple Silicon chip.
Overall, Apple says that Game Porting Toolkit 4 will greatly reduce the time, cost, and effort needed to bring a game to the Mac. The toolkit is still in beta testing, though, so it remains to be seen just how useful Apple’s AI agents will be.
Apple’s creative AI hub Image Playground will be capable of creating “photorealistic” AI images, thanks to new AI models running behind the scenes. Apple announced the news at WWDC 2026, the company’s annual developers conference.
Image Playground is one of Apple’s original AI hubs, where you can create images with generative AI. Now, that content should be more customizable and look less like plastic AI slop. You will be able to edit specific parts of an image — an important capability for error-prone AI — by tapping on it and describing the change you want with a simple text prompt.
Note the Apple Intelligence purple glow on the cake as the AI edits it.
You’ll be able to use these AI creations across your device, including to make contact posters and backgrounds.
This WWDC, we’re getting our first look at the next generation of Apple software, including iOS 27. It’s also Tim Cook’s last event as CEO, with hardware chief John Ternus expected to step up into the top role before its September iPhone 18 event.
Every major tech company has become invested in AI in recent years. Apple isn’t an exception, but it has taken a more measured approach since launching its AI two years ago. That’s all changing today as the company is expected to unveil its most significant updates to Apple Intelligence yet, specifically in the form of a new-and-improved Siri.
Rush Digital Marketing’s Nexus Install is a 60-day engagement that builds a LinkedIn lead-generation system and hands ownership to the client. Founder Amanda Rush argues the model fills a gap between DIY courses and ongoing retainers for coaches and consultants seeking predictable client acquisition.
TL;DR
Rush Digital Marketing observes a recurring tension among coaches, consultants, and agencies navigating growth: the choice often leans toward either building systems independently through time-intensive programs or engaging ongoing service providers that manage execution externally. Each path presents its own set of considerations, and within this dynamic, the firm introduces Nexus Install as a structured model that combines implementation and eventual ownership within a defined engagement.
Amanda Rush
As the marketing consulting space continues to expand, these dynamics become more pronounced. The global marketing consulting market is projected to reach $45.5 billion in 2031, with continued growth driven by increasing complexity in digital ecosystems and demand for more accountable outcomes. Within this environment, coaches and consultants are engaging with a wider array of delivery models, from modular consulting to subscription-based advisory. Rush Digital Marketing notes that this growing diversity reflects a broader shift toward flexibility, while also introducing additional layers of decision-making for professionals shaping their client acquisition strategies.
“Many professionals already understand how to close conversations effectively. The challenge often lies in creating a system where those conversations arrive with consistency and direction,” Rush explains. This observation informs the company’s method for designing outreach systems that emphasize predictability and thoughtful sequencing over sporadic bursts of activity.
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Rush Digital Marketing emphasizes that the traditional retainer model continues to play an important role across the industry, particularly for businesses that value ongoing external support. At the same time, it acknowledges that some coaches, consultants, and organizations may be interested in having more direct involvement with the systems that generate their opportunities.
Nexus Install, designed as a 60-day build-and-handover experience, is positioned as a response to that nuance. The structure follows a carefully defined timeline. The initial phase focuses on building the client’s LinkedIn lead-generation system from the ground up, defining the target audience, developing messaging sequences, and launching outreach campaigns designed to initiate early engagement.
Consequently, the second phase transitions into guided ownership, where clients learn how to interpret performance data, manage conversations, and refine messaging based on real-time feedback. “Ownership changes the relationship people have with their growth,” Rush states. “I believe that when someone understands the system and can guide it themselves, their confidence in decision-making tends to expand.”
This balance between immediate traction and long-term sustainability plays a central role in the experience. The system is designed to operate independently once established, requiring a relatively modest daily time commitment. At the same time, ongoing support remains available through structured touchpoints such as weekly Q&A sessions.
This model has developed over time. According to Rush, the Nexus framework itself has undergone years of internal refinement, with extensive testing before being introduced as a client-facing offering. That process reflects a deliberate effort to help ensure the system performs consistently across different use cases while remaining adaptable to individual markets.
Client experiences offer an additional perspective on how this model translates in practice. One coach described seeing a noticeable increase in relevant connections and conversations within a few months, alongside a growing sense of alignment between outreach efforts and business goals. Another founder said, “What impressed me most wasn’t just the results, but the process. The Rush Team is obsessive about testing and refining the messaging until it performs. Every week, they brought new data, insights, and tweaks that pushed our numbers higher.” In a separate case, a consultant shared how the initial implementation period led to sustained engagement long after active collaboration had concluded, with new opportunities continuing to emerge organically.
These experiences reinforce Rush Digital Marketing’s belief that structured systems, when understood and owned, can continue to deliver value beyond the initial build phase. For coaches and consultants evaluating their options, Nexus Install introduces an additional dimension to consider. “At Rush Digital Marketing, we want the conversation to extend beyond choosing between learning independently and delegating entirely,” Rush remarks. “We want it to become an exploration of how systems can be both built and transferred in a way that supports ongoing growth without needing continuous external management.“
The Federal Communications Commission has freed Amazon from a requirement to deploy the first 1,616 satellites in its Amazon Leo broadband internet constellation by July 30.
The looming deadline had been a condition of the FCC’s 2020 license for the network, when it was known as Project Kuiper. But in January, Amazon asked for a two-year extension of that deadline, citing the limited availability of commercial launch opportunities.
Instead of pushing back July’s interim deadline, the FCC issued a conditional waiver. Amazon is still required to deploy all 3,232 of its planned Gen 1 satellites by July 2029, as originally mandated.
SpaceX — which operates Starlink, a rival satellite broadband network with more than 10 million subscribers — opposed giving Amazon more time. It argued that the FCC should make Amazon wait for a future license processing round before allowing more satellites to be launched. But in an order filed on Friday, the FCC said its remedy was “tailored to ensure that Americans quickly benefit from multiple, facilities-based providers of next-gen satellite services.”
Under the conditional waiver, Amazon Leo satellites launched after July 30 would temporarily lose priority status. That means Amazon bears the regulatory burden of ensuring its newer satellites won’t interfere with other constellations, including Starlink.
Amazon can reclaim its priority status in March 2028, or sooner if it hits the 50% deployment milestone before then. The order also includes a provision to restore priority status in October 2027 if Amazon can prove it has manufactured all necessary hardware and fully secured the required launch manifests to hit that 50% mark.
Amazon still faces a challenging schedule to meet its final milestone. It has reserved dozens of launches on rockets ranging from United Launch Alliance’s Atlas 5 and Vulcan, Arianespace’s Ariane 6 and SpaceX’s Falcon 9. The company has also been counting on Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture to launch Amazon Leo satellites on its New Glenn rocket. But two weeks ago, a New Glenn rocket blew up on its Florida launch pad during a static-fire test — forcing what’s likely to be months of delay in Blue Origin’s launch schedule.
ZeroAvia was flying high. After launching in California in 2017, the clean aviation startup was expanding, establishing an R&D facility in Everett in the shadow of aerospace juggernaut Boeing and running test flights in the United Kingdom. It was raising cash from government grants and investors including Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund.
In May 2023, the company unveiled a retired turboprop from Alaska Airlines, wrapped in ZeroAvia’s navy and sky blue graphics, as part of a partnership to outfit the craft with sustainable technologies.
“The largest hydrogen-powered commercial aircraft is being developed right here in the greatest, most innovative state, the state of Washington,” said then-Gov. Jay Inslee at an event at Everett’s Paine Field.
Three years later, the startup is in a far different place.
Except for a sales team, ZeroAvia’s operations in Washington have ceased. The plane was never retrofit with hydrogen powertrains and the fate of the startup’s 136,000-square-foot Paine Field R&D facility is uncertain. Product development has shifted to the UK, and that work has narrowed. The company left California.
Last month ZeroAvia announced that CEO and founder Val Miftakhov had stepped down “to pursue new opportunities.” At least three other members of the C-suite have also departed.
Despite the setbacks, the company says it’s moving forward.
“The vision and mission of the company is the same — it’s hydrogen electric powertrains for aviation, decarbonization, reduced cost — these are the goals,” Chief Strategic Officer James McMicking told GeekWire. “But we have to adjust the pace and focus based on what’s going on in the market.”
Aviation is proving one of the most difficult sectors to decarbonize. Traditional jet fuel is far more energy-dense and widely available than planet-friendly alternatives such as hydrogen, batteries and sustainable aviation fuels — and that challenge is central to ZeroAvia’s struggle.
The startup is developing hydrogen fuel cells to generate electricity, which powers electric motors to turn an aircraft’s propellers. The plan was to develop a product line at the Everett site including fuel cells, power electronics, compressors and advanced electric motors, giving companies the option of buying full engines as well as components.
But hydrogen has struggled to take off in the U.S., and while momentum was building under the Biden administration, President Trump slashed support for the sector after taking office last year.
Snohomish County Executive Dave Somers was sympathetic to ZeroAvia’s struggles.
“Any business can face ups and downs, and those ups and downs may be particularly notable for businesses in emerging technologies or sectors,” he said by email, wishing the company his best “as they work through their challenges.”
One year ago, Bloomberg reported the company was trying to quickly secure $150 million from investors to stay solvent through the end of 2028. McMicking declined to say how much was raised. Earlier rounds and government support come to roughly $300 million, and in 2023 Breakthrough Energy Ventures was ZeroAvia’s largest shareholder.
That funding includes $700,000 from Washington state, awarded across two grants to support its Everett operations. ZeroAvia put up $5.5 million of its own money to lease and prepare the R&D facility, which is owned by Snohomish County. By 2023, ZeroAvia employed roughly 40 people in the area.
Daniel Tappana, director of economic development for the Economic Alliance of Snohomish County, said ZeroAvia was a good fit for the region, with Boeing’s deep roots and a robust aviation sector with skilled employees.
“It was an incredible opportunity with some of the new emerging clean, green aviation technologies,” Tappana said.
Three years after launching, ZeroAvia conducted its first test flight on a six-seat hydrogen-powered electric aircraft in 2020. The company in 2024 announced that American Airlines planned to buy 100 of its hydrogen electric engines for its 65-seat Bombardier CRJ700 jets. It set a target of selling hydrogen-powered systems for aircraft carrying up to 20 passengers by the end of last year, and for Q400 aircraft — like the plane provided by Alaska Airlines — as soon as next year.
The new plan is more modest: focus on the hydrogen fuel cell system, while powertrain ambitions are on hold. R&D in the UK now centers on systems including hydrogen refueling and onboard storage, with a team also working on high-temperature fuel-cell stacks for larger aircraft.
ZeroAvia is selling prototype fuel-cell systems and working toward certification with UK aviation regulators. Customers can integrate the technology into their own systems, which the startup aims to accommodate with customized products. The company also sees opportunities in defense applications, including hydrogen-powered drones, particularly in remote locations.
The work is underway as ZeroAvia’s board searches for a new CEO. Board chair Christine Ourmieres-Widener has been managing day-to-day operations for the past five months and will continue in that role until a successor is hired. Miftakhov, who is based in California, “is still very much engaged,” McMicking said.
“We all feel very comfortable that we’ve got a good plan,” he said.
Clean aviation has proven a tough sector to crack. Arlington, Wash.-based Eviation Aircraft laid off most of its employees last year after developing an electric-powered airplane. But other electric aviation startups press on, including magniX, AeroTEC, Electra and Beta Technologies.
Fellow California aviation company Universal Hydrogen ran out of money in 2024 and shut down — a fate Europe’s hydrogen-aviation ecosystem has largely avoided, thanks in part to stronger public funding.
In announcing Universal Hydrogen’s closure, co-founder Jon Gordon urged others to stay the course, saying it was up to companies like ZeroAvia, Airbus and others to realize the vision for hydrogen aviation.
“You can bet I am cheering them on,” Gordon said on LinkedIn. “Our future may depend on it.”
Trump signed NSPM-11 ordering the military to adopt frontier AI faster, protect models from Chinese distillation, and barring vendors from disabling systems warfighters depend on. Warren is demanding hearings on whether the rush leaves Americans exposed.
TL;DR
President Donald Trump signed National Security Presidential Memorandum 11 on Friday, directing the US military and intelligence agencies to accelerate their adoption of advanced AI while protecting frontier models from theft by foreign adversaries. The directive replaces the Biden administration’s NSM-25, which had governed AI in national security since 2024, and adds a provision that no commercial vendor can disable, degrade, or modify an AI system that American warfighters depend on without prior government approval.
The memo lands in a week already crowded with AI policy moves: a voluntary executive order on frontier model reviews, the announcement that Anthropic is preparing to release Mythos-class models to the general public, and growing pressure from Senator Elizabeth Warren to probe whether the administration’s approach is moving too fast without adequate safeguards.
The memo gives agencies 120 days to review and update procurement processes so they can onboard advanced AI models from multiple vendors rapidly. It requires the Secretary of Defense to update the directive governing autonomy in weapon systems within 90 days. It calls on agencies including the FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the Office of the National Cyber Director to maintain “deep, proactive” partnerships with the AI industry.
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The language is blunt: US military and intelligence agencies have been too slow to adopt AI, and the technology is developing faster than their procurement systems can accommodate. The memo also discloses the existence of a classified annex, to be issued within 90 days, whose contents are not public.
On the defensive side, the memo directs officials including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and NSA chief General Joshua Rudd to work with “willing private-sector companies” to develop protocols protecting frontier models from adversary efforts to steal or replicate them. The distillation attacks the White House described in April, where Chinese labs submitted millions of queries to American models to replicate their capabilities, are the explicit concern.
NSPM-11 arrives as Anthropic prepares to release Mythos-class models to the general public in the coming weeks. Mythos found more than 10,000 high-severity software vulnerabilities in its first month of testing and was initially shared only with a limited group of trusted partners through Project Glasswing. Making it widely available means the same offensive cybersecurity capabilities that the US government wants to deploy will also be accessible to anyone with an API key.
CISA, the top US cyber defence agency, is expected to issue its own directive in the coming days ordering federal agencies to secure their networks against AI-boosted hackers. The layering of NSPM-11, the voluntary executive order, and the coming CISA directive represents the most concentrated burst of AI security policy the administration has produced.
Senator Elizabeth Warren sent a letter to Senate Banking Committee Chair Tim Scott on Monday, calling for hearings with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on the administration’s AI policy. Warren argued that the voluntary model-review provision in the executive order gives AI companies a “free pass at the expense of Americans’ safety and security.”
She also pressed on chip exports. Warren cited Commerce Department guidance issued last month to block Chinese companies from acquiring advanced AI chips through overseas affiliates, calling the existing export control regime riddled with loopholes. “The Commerce Department’s mismanagement of US export controls has resulted in loopholes that may have allowed the most advanced AI chips to flow to companies with ties to China’s military,” she wrote.
The administration is simultaneously telling agencies to move faster on AI adoption and trying to protect the models those agencies will use from the adversaries who want to copy them. It is building a framework that is voluntary for the companies, mandatory for the agencies, and contested by Congress.
Meanwhile, Iranian drone strikes earlier this year knocked out power to Amazon Web Services data centres in Bahrain and the UAE, demonstrating that the physical infrastructure AI runs on is itself a target. The memo calls on agencies to work with the private sector to boost both physical and cybersecurity of data centres.
Sriram Krishnan, one of the administration’s top AI advisers, announced on Friday that he will leave the White House at the end of the month. His departure removes one of the few figures who bridged the gap between Silicon Valley and the national security establishment at a moment when that bridge has never been more load-bearing.
Humanity may be scrolling its way out of existence.
Across the globe, fertility rates are plummeting. In 2023, the average number of births per woman worldwide fell beneath 2.1 — the minimum level necessary for averting population decline (also known as the “replacement rate”). And this collapse is not concentrated in just a handful of places; more than two-thirds of all nations now have below-replacement fertility.
While this crisis has been building for decades, its nature recently changed. In the 20th century, fertility fell primarily because couples started having fewer children. Now, it is falling mostly because fewer people are forming couples — or having sex at all.
If these trends continue, the consequences will be transformative — and possibly, catastrophic, as graying populations place unprecedented burdens on the remaining young. Vast countries will swiftly shrivel into city states. Today, Thailand is home to 63 million people. In two centuries, that will fall to 2 million, if the country’s current fertility rate persists.
These are just 23rd-century problems. If sustained indefinitely, today’s global fertility rate would ensure humanity’s extinction.
And it’s partly your phone’s fault.
Or so one leading theory goes. To make sense of recent fertility trends, some analysts have turned to the devices in their pockets. In the view of the journalist John Burn-Murdoch and social scientist Alice Evans, the smartphone helped birth the global spike in singledom.
Their argument goes (partly) like this: As smartphone ownership skyrocketed globally during the 2010s, more and more young people tapped into a vast, omnipresent trove of personalized entertainment, which reduced their incentives to socialize in person. When you have virtually every movie, TV show, and pornography ever made at your fingertips, you no longer need parties for stimulation or diversion. And when you have an X or Facebook account, you can participate in a public conversation — and experience communal recognition — without ever leaving the comfort of your goon cave.
Yet this withdrawal from in-person socializing reduces young people’s opportunities to meet romantic partners or develop social skills. Relationship formation falls as a result.
“The digital revolution has played a signal role in both degrading socialization for young adults and dividing young adults from one another,” Brad Wilcox, a senior fellow at the Institute for Family Studies, told me.
And that revolution is only just beginning. After all, the tech sector’s quest to make social isolation more appealing did not end with the advent of the iPhone, Netflix, or TikTok.
Since 2022, more than 1 billion people have gained access to an infinitely patient conversation partner — one who can speak knowledgeably about all of their interests and listen compassionately to all of their problems. Thanks to Claude and ChatGPT, hermits can not only enjoy perpetual stimulation without social contact but also forms of emotional support that had previously required an intimate friend, family member, lover, or licensed therapist.
And these are the worst versions of these products we’ll ever see. Future iterations may take even more engaging forms; someday, Claude might be able to get it on.
This makes the “smartphone theory” one of the more important hypotheses of our time. If its narrative is correct — and there is some compelling evidence in its favor — then the fertility crisis is liable to deepen in the coming years. And AI might be replacing more than just our jobs.
Before digging into the “smartphone theory” of falling birth rates, it’s worth clarifying its scope.
No one thinks that digital technology is the primary cause of declining fertility, a trend that predates the iPhone by more than a century in wealthy countries (Swedish farmers did not start having fewer kids in the 1880s because of TikTok).
Rather, the main drivers of the long-term fertility descent appear to be foundational features of modernity: When scientific systems of healthcare and sanitation reduce child mortality, couples feel less compelled to have six kids in the hopes that three might survive. When industrial progress boosts the returns to education, parents have an incentive to invest more resources in each individual child’s development, making large families harder to sustain. And when women secure political rights, economic autonomy, and reliable contraception, fewer choose to spend decades of their lives perpetually pregnant.
Yet these structural forces only get us so far. Modern medicine, economic development, and women’s emancipation may have put humanity on the path to collapsing fertility. But some other factor recently sped us on our way: In the aughts, fertility rates actually plateaued globally and rose in advanced economies — before abruptly plummeting in the 2010s.
During that same decade, rates of singledom also spiked. In countries as varied as the United States, South Korea, Turkey, Tunisia, and Finland, young adults became less likely to have a romantic partner. And this “relationship recession” seems to have fueled the post-2010 drop in fertility. According to a 2025 study published in Nature, mothers in most high-income countries are having about as many children as they did decades ago. Yet fertility rates are falling nonetheless, due to a steep drop in the share of women who have any children at all.
The coupling collapse can’t be explained by a sudden expansion of women’s rights; it is happening even in deeply patriarchal societies like Saudi Arabia. Nor is it easily attributed to economic turmoil; rates of romantic partnership have fallen in both high-growth and low-growth nations, advanced economies and developing ones, countries rattled by the 2008 crisis and those largely unharmed by it.
Smartphones, on the other hand, were in the right places at the right times.
In country after country, the rise in singles — and drop in birth rates — coincided with the mass adoption of smartphones, according to an analysis from Burn-Murdoch, the journalist at the Financial Times.
Correlation isn’t causation. But there’s reason to think this timing isn’t coincidental.
In one recent study, economists from the University of Cincinnati examined how teen fertility changed in different American and British localities as they gained access to 4G mobile networks. They found that the arrival of high-speed internet consistently accelerated declines in adolescent birth rates and conceptions. Their explanation for this phenomenon is straightforward: When the center of adolescent life moves online, in-personal socializing declines — and with it, opportunities for one thing to lead to another.
Time-use data lends credence to this theory. Across 21 European nations, the share of people who got together with their friends on a daily basis fell from 21 percent in 2006 to 12 percent in 2022. In the US, meanwhile, time spent on in-person social interaction has plunged during the smartphone era.
Taken together, these data points appear to tell a simple story: When humans acquire 24/7 access to social media platforms and unlimited digital entertainment, they feel less need to hang out with peers in the real world — and demand more from potential partners.
“When phones become ever more engaging and ever more exciting, then you want a super engaging person,” Evans, the social scientist, said. “He’s got to be better than an episode of Bridgerton.”
Thus, some retreat from the frictions of in-person socialization entirely. Others forfeit opportunities to hone their social skills or find suitable but imperfect mates. Sexlessness ensues.
It isn’t hard to see how AI could accelerate these trends.
Streaming and social media might have made the solitary life less dull and uncomfortable. But Pornhub won’t talk with you about your career anxieties, favorite Civil War battle, or debilitating fear of iguanas. And TikTok won’t provide discrete reassurance about that new mole on your chest. Before 2022, securing this sort of sympathetic ear typically required forging and sustaining real-world relationships.
But now, Claude, Gemini, and ChatGPT are happy to oblige.
Thus, if smartphones were outcompeting offline interaction before they hosted chatbots, they seem even better equipped to do so today.
Separately, AI may also widen the gap between young people’s romantic expectations and dating realities.
Frequent interaction with a chatbot — who perpetually centers your concerns, never loses patience, and always has something to say about your topics of interest — could encourage unrealistic standards for human conversation, particularly among those who’ve used AI intensively from an early age.
Of course, these are mere speculations. And research into AI’s impacts on in-person socialization and dating is limited. But there is some evidence that chatbots could be expediting young people’s drift towards solitude and sexlessness.
In a study published in 2025 from OpenAI and MIT, researchers tracked 981 participants’ use of AI chatbots over a four-week period. They found that subjects who voluntarily spent more time talking with LLMs during that span became more socially isolated by the study’s end.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that heavy chatbot use caused people to socialize less with other humans. After all, those who lack hangout opportunities might be more inclined to talk with chatbots. And yet, those who used AI intensively during the study had roughly as active social lives as other participants when the trial period began. Therefore, it seems likely that — at least in some cases — bonding with ChatGPT led to social isolation rather than vice versa.
Meanwhile, survey data suggest that people are turning to chatbots for companionship or romantic stimulation in growing numbers. In a 2025 poll from Brigham Young University’s Wheatley Institute, 19 percent of American adults — including 31 percent of young men — said they had chatted with an AI system meant to simulate a romantic partner.
More recently, the institute examined the use of these pseudo-significant others by young Americans in committed relationships. In its survey, 15 percent of young adults with human partners reported having a secret AI romantic relationship. And among this significant minority, more than 70 percent of men — and nearly 60 percent of women — agreed with the statement, “I wish conversations with my partner were like AI.” And more than half of both male and female users of AI companions said they wished their human partners “behaved like my AI.”
Perhaps more concerningly, respondents who used AI companions regularly were more likely to be in unstable relationships — in which they often thought that their partnership was in trouble, or discussed ending the relationship, or had broken up and gotten back together.
Once again, causality is difficult to determine. People in unstable relationships might be more inclined to seek artificial companionship. But chatbots’ influence on their users’ expectations are likely a factor, according to the report’s co-author Brian Willoughby.
“The more I talk to an AI companion that is always validating me, always taking my side, and always talking about what I want to talk about,” Willoughby said, “the more conversations with my real-life partner — who has their own views — will start paling in comparison to those AI interactions.”
And silicon substitutes for human intimacy will only grow more sophisticated and holistic in the coming decades. Or so many in and around the tech industry believe.
Daniel Faggella, founder of Emerj Artificial Intelligence Research, believes that advances in AI, virtual reality, and mechanized sex toys will eventually render human intercourse an obsolete pastime — one largely confined to nostalgists and connoisseurs, like driving stick shift.
“The great sexual organ is the brain,” Faggella told me. “If you have the visuals, the voice, the haptics, the sound, real-time biofeedback — and even very crude physical implements to go along with them — I think you’re going to beat the human flesh experience every time.”
I suspect that sex has more staying power than Faggella allows. But erotic AI doesn’t need to fully displace intimacy to accelerate the dating recession and fertility crisis. It merely needs to lure a sizable minority of men and women away from the hassle and heartbreak of human relationships. Judging by existing trends, superintelligent sexbots seem liable to meet that challenge.
AI’s effects on human sociality remain uncertain. In theory, artificial intelligence could benefit human relationships and fertility — by, for example, helping awkward adolescents refine their conversational skills or providing troubled couples with on-demand counseling.
Moreover, some experts question how much smartphones actually changed fertility trends. In the view of University of Pennsylvania economist Jesús Fernández-Villaverde, the fundamental causes of the 2010s fertility collapse are long-term structural forces — among them, secularization, the “dissolution of old social networks,” and the rise of a service economy in which women’s relative economic power has increased.
Social media and streaming may have accelerated these processes, in Fernández-Villaverde’s view, by diffusing feminist ideas: Over the past decade, women in patriarchal societies have gained unprecedented access to commentary and dramas that affirm their desire for autonomy and idealize egalitarian marriages (Evans and Burn-Murdoch also put considerable weight on this dynamic). But he believes that this merely hastened already inevitable declines.
“Cellphones matter a little bit,” Fernández-Villaverde said. “But it’s not because people are spending their whole life playing Pokémon. It’s because they’re seeing what the rest of the world looks like and deciding that they want to do things differently.”
Nevertheless, it is clear that mass smartphone adoption coincided with falling in-person socialization — and rising singledom — in all manner of different countries. And there are some signs that AI is further displacing face-to-face interaction and distorting relationship expectations. In any case, the tech industry has a strong incentive to generate evermore compelling substitutes for human connection.
“Here in the Bay Area, all these startups are trying to make apps that will compete in the attention economy,” Evans said. “All these genius software engineers are trying to make something that hooks you in. So I’d predict that the market will enable AI to outcompete humans — they will be funnier, more charming, and enticing.”
At the very least, that possibility warrants concern, given the potential consequences for both fertility and human welfare.
If the past decade is any guide, technological progress may be speeding us toward a future of ubiquitous ghost towns, scarce children, and nursing homes full of gray-haired hermits, each passing their days with VR paramours as civilization slowly unwinds.
There are worse fates. But ideally, humanity would hold out for a better one.
The all-new Siri AI looks like it’s finally coming to iPhone in 2026, after much drama, analyst hand-wringing, and two years later than expected.
WWDC is Apple’s annual developer conference. It’s held every June and gives developers and fans alike a glimpse of what to expect when Apple rolls out its major operating system updates in the fall.
This year is somewhat of a banner year, now, all thanks to one announcement. It finally seems like we’re going to get a brand new, contextualized Siri AI
You know, the one that we were initially promised in 2024.
As well as the new name, Siri AI’s upgrade looks a bit different from what we were initially given. Instead of the iPhone being bordered by a rainbow of colors, Siri now springs to life from the Dynamic Island with a Liquid Glass appearance.
In addition to familiar verbal commands, Siri AI is now able to work with data from multiple apps to provide answers to prompts. There’s now also a dedicated Siri AI app that works across platforms.
Example of a conversation with the new Siri AI – image credit: Apple
It can also maintain a conversation with users, allowing for follow-up questions and prompts. At any point, Siri AI can be activated by “Hey, Siri,” or pressing on the iPhone’s side button.
On the Mac, it’s part of Spotlight. Instead of the old “Type to Siri” that was reached by pressing the Command key twice, Spotlight recognizes a Siri request and passes it to the new Siri AI.
Siri AI then enters a chatbot-style interface, as previously rumored. Apple says that as well as data from a user’s apps, it has World Knowledge, which means it can retrieve information from the web.
Now Siri AI is also part of the Camera app. Instead of launching Visual Intelligence, Siri can analyze photos directly from the camera.
Apple says the most powerful on-device AI models will not be on all devices – image credit: Apple
But the biggest takeaway is that we’re finally getting the contextual Siri we’ve been hoping for, natural language prompts and all.
Apple first introduced its idea for a new, more personal Siri in 2024. At that time, Apple believed that while the revamped personal assistant may not make it to the iOS 18 launch, it most certainly would be out before the year was over.
Siri AI on the Mac is now part of Spotlight – image credit: Apple
And then Apple believed that Siri would make its debut in March, as part of the iOS 18.4 update that introduced other Apple Intelligence features. But, it didn’t.
Apple soon realized that it had bitten off more than it could chew. In March 2025, the company announced that Siri would be delayed for an indeterminate amount of time.
And then came the shakeups. That same month, John Giannandrea was ousted as the Siri chief, replaced by Mike Rockwell.
The following month, it was learned that Apple would be sending nearly 200 engineers to a multi-week AI vibecoding bootcamp to help shore up coding deficiencies.
Since then, Apple’s been working on Siri behind the scenes. Months would go by without much news, either from Apple or purported insider knowledge.
Then, in October 2025, CEO Tim Cook announced that Siri would finally appear in its newest form “on time” in 2026. Of course, saying “in 2026” is still hedging, as it gave the developers a 365-day deadline.
All these delays haven’t reflected well on Apple, either. Apple got hit with a class action lawsuit, which was eventually settled in December 2025 for $250 million.
The UK government has laid out a $1.47 billion plan to shake its dependence on foreign-made artificial intelligence hardware.
Under the measures, announced Monday, the UK will spend more than $1 billion on a national AI supercomputer. It will be stocked with $530 million worth of hardware, including $200 million that will go toward specialist inference chips for processing AI tasks. Priority will be given to up-and-coming British firms in the procurement process; the government pointed to Olix and Fractile, two UK startups developing new styles of inference chip, as potential beneficiaries. British researchers and startups are expected to be able to use the supercomputer starting in 2030.
The new measures are part of a broader effort by the UK government to minimize dependence on foreign powers for access to AI products and services—a move made more urgent by the apparent souring of the relationship between the US and its European counterparts. The European Union outlined a similar “tech sovereignty” proposal last week. This year, European leaders have found themselves in confrontation with the Trump administration over issues ranging from the sovereignty of Greenland to tariff policy to immigration, leading to speculation about a deterioration in the NATO alliance. Against that backdrop, a dependence on American technology could be a liability, wielded by the US against European countries as leverage.
“The geopolitical settlement of the last 40 years has ruptured—and many would argue is gone for good,” UK technology secretary Liz Kendall said during an April speech at the Royal United Services Institute, a defense and security think tank. “For Britain, AI sovereignty is about reducing overdependencies and increasing resilience.”
“There are those who say this race is already lost—that it is too late to challenge the dominance of the US or China in AI chips—but I do not accept such defeatism,” she added.
Last November, the UK began to establish “AI growth zones,” regions across the country with fewer administrative and regulatory barriers to building data centers. In April, it launched a $675 million venture fund, SovAI, for investing in homegrown AI startups in fields ranging from model development to agentic AI to drug discovery. The supercomputer hardware plan is the latest piece of that expanding mosaic.
Though the UK is home to prominent firms like ARM, whose chip architectures are ubiquitous across the globe, semiconductor design and manufacturing is otherwise dominated by American and Asian companies. By acting as a large customer to domestic chip startups, the UK government is aiming to both support their growth and incentivize them to remain in the country long-term.
“Historically, the UK government has just been impenetrable … the willingness to back UK businesses with innovative technologies with hard contracts is a really important milestone,” says Ed Bussey, CEO at Oxford Science Enterprises, a venture capital firm that participated in Fractile’s 2024 seed round. “If we can build out a procurement pipeline of revenues for these companies, it helps to anchor them here.”
The changes unfolding in AI datacenter design—moving away from homogenous fleets of chips toward a mix of specialist hardware for different purposes—represent an opportunity for the UK to carve out a strategically important niche.
“You can’t do everything on your own, so you really have to be militant about what areas you want to specialize in,” says Keegan McBride, director of science and technology at the Tony Blair Institute, a think tank founded by the former UK prime minister. “The UK is playing a very smart game … If they get it right, there’s a massive opportunity. If other companies begin to depend on British chips, that gives you leverage.”
Apple has announced a refreshed version of the iPhone’s Screen Time features for iOS 27, giving parents a new way to ensure children only access the content that’s right for them.
Alongside iOS 27, parental controls will also extend to the iPad with iPadOS 27 and the Mac, with macOS 27.
Screen Time has long allowed parents to limit which apps their kids use, and how long they can use them. With iOS 27, announced at WWDC 2026, Apple has refreshed the way this system works.
With iOS 27, Apple makes it easier for parents to create a new Apple Account for their children. They’ll be shown how to modify their child’s access to the apps installed on that device. More apps can be enabled over time, too.
Apple also announced that iOS 27 will build on an existing feature that allows children to request access to an app. With iOS 27 installed, this will be expanded to include websites, giving parents the ability to preview the site before approving it for viewing.
With Apple’s 2026 software updates, kids will also be warned if they receive an iMessage that includes blood or gore. Currently, this feature is limited to images with possible nudity.
Time Allowances will give parents more control over how long and when their children can use their devices. Building on the existing Screen Time features, Time Allowances is a clearer, more easily managed system at a time when screen time is a hot topic for parents.
To help back up this refreshed and expanded Screen Time experience, developers will be given a slew of APIs to use. Apple’s new software updates will then hook into these APIs when managing a child’s access to apps and features.
Apple’s new software updates are set to be made available for all of its platforms later in 2026.
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