Tech
Does Turning Off Bluetooth Actually Make Wi-Fi Better?
There are usually other things worth trying first.
Homes and workplaces are packed with all sorts of wireless devices accumulated over the years. From your Bluetooth gaming headset to an AI-enabled smart speaker, each device competes for frequency bands that get more crowded with time. This network congestion can lead to dropped connections and sluggish performance.
Investing in a new router or mesh network can seem like a quick solution, but there are alternative methods you can try before purchasing electronics made pricier by the AI boom spiking hardware costs. One culprit of congestion that’s often singled out is Bluetooth.
Bluetooth devices are often blamed for this interference, but are they really the problem? And is it severe enough to warrant turning them off to speed up local Wi-Fi? In most cases, your Wi-Fi network isn’t really interacting with Bluetooth devices anymore. Here’s what you need to know about when these connections overlap and how you can keep them apart.
Does Bluetooth make your Wi-Fi slower?
Bluetooth can interfere with your Wi-Fi network, but only on the 2.4 GHz band. Bluetooth connections between devices operate at this frequency, which is the default option of smart home protocols like Zigbee and Thread. Microwaves also operate on the same band. When a smart thermostat, fridge and home security system compete for real estate, interference from Bluetooth devices can stress your Wi-Fi connection further. The resulting latency and packet loss can impair sensitive tasks like gaming sessions or video calling.
The 2.4 GHz frequency band is optimal for these gadgets since it penetrates thick walls better and functions better at longer distances, albeit at slower speeds. Newer devices adopt Wi-Fi coexistence logic to ensure devices operate simultaneously without slowing each other down.
Most smartphones, laptops, TVs and other modern client devices operate on the 5 GHz or 6 GHz bands provided by dual-band or tri-band router setups. The only reason they’d connect to a slower band is if they’re impeded from connecting to those faster bands by physical barriers like walls.
What blocks the Wi-Fi signal the most?
If your 4K gaming or Netflix streaming sessions feel more jittery than usual, there are other things you can do instead of powering down Bluetooth devices.
Within a frequency band, most routers pick Wi-Fi channels automatically. MakeUseOf found that a Wi-Fi analyzer app like Network Scanner will let you find the optimal channels within the 2.4 GHz band for a reliable connection. For instance, channels 1, 6, and 11 offer the least interference on this frequency band. Using shielded cables near your router and primary workstation is another option that lowers electromagnetic interference. Spread your devices further apart to free up bandwidth for the ones closest to your router.
The severity of the congestion also depends on your environment. Your neighbor’s devices can impact your network in a dense apartment complex or office space. Concrete walls can create dead zones that reduce signal strength, which can be remedied with Wi-Fi extenders or a mesh network. These solutions are more likely to resolve network congestion. In most cases, Bluetooth devices no longer pose a risk to your home Wi-Fi.
What we know so far: Apple is widely expected to introduce its first foldable smartphone in September, joining Samsung and a host of other companies in the emerging market for ultra-premium handsets. It’s too early to know if Apple’s foldable will be the must-have gadget of the 2026 holiday season, or if a prototyped accessory will even make it to market.
According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple has internally prototyped and tested a version of the Apple Pencil for its forthcoming foldable. The accessory is said to be stubbier than the version for the iPad due to the phone’s height, and attaches using magnets for storage and charging.
A stylus for what is essentially a small tablet doesn’t sound like a terrible idea, but there are drawbacks. Gurman said stowing the Pencil could get tricky when not actively using it. Perhaps even more concerning is the delicate nature of foldable displays. Most are manufactured using plastics, which can scratch just by dragging your fingernail across it. The last thing you want with something that fragile is a stylus with a pointy tip.
Then there’s the principal of the matter. When Apple co-founder Steve Jobs introduced the original iPhone in 2007, he famously said that “nobody wants a stylus.” And thus, the iPhone has relied on touch inputs from the very beginning. Bringing in a stylus nearly two decades later would be a surprise, but Apple will be under new leadership by the time the iPhone Fold ships so it’s not an entirely impossible outcome.
To be clear, Gurman doesn’t think Apple will actually launch the accessory as a consumer product when the foldable debuts in a couple of weeks and neither do I. While it could be helpful to a certain subset of buyers, it’s simply a bridge too far at this point. Foldable displays need to be much more robust to withstand the daily stresses introduced by a stylus, and the technology simply isn’t there yet.
Apple is set to announce its folding iPhone at an event scheduled for September 9.
MapQuest stood up to President Donald Trump, and now its app is reaping the rewards.
The “OG of online mapping,” as the company calls itself, announced on Thursday that it would not change the name of Lake Ontario on its maps to Lake America, despite Trump’s executive order directing the U.S. Department of the Interior to update the lake’s name in the U.S. geographic naming service. As a result, MapQuest’s mobile app downloads soared, sending the iOS app to the No. 4 position on the U.S. App Store’s Top Charts for apps (not including games) as of Monday morning on the U.S. east coast.
MapQuest also reached the No. 8 position overall in the U.S. App Store across both apps and games, and it became the No. 1 Navigation app in the United States.
In Canada’s App Store, the app reached No. 2 overall as of Sunday evening.
The 30-year-old company remarked that it received “hundreds of thousands” of new downloads since its decision to keep the name Lake Ontario in place, and saw its app’s usage climb to 50 times above its normal levels.
Third-party data from market intelligence provider Sensor Tower confirms the surge, noting that MapQuest saw 184,000 and 162,000 total global and U.S. app downloads during the week beginning August 24, respectively, each representing an increase of more than 10x week-over-week. In the U.S., daily downloads were up 128% day-over-day from August 26 to August 30.
“We took the same approach we did with the Gulf of Mexico: be part of the conversation, and give people an app that keeps the names they’re familiar with,” said Doug Berger, General Manager of MapQuest, in a statement. “Hundreds of thousands of people signaled to us this weekend that we got it right by downloading our app.”
MapQuest also released an online tool that lets you jokingly rename Lake Ontario to whatever you want it to be, then share the results on social media. The company had offered a similar tool last year, after Trump renamed the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.
Trump’s decision to rename the body of water bordering the U.S and Canada comes as trade talks broke down, leading the U.S. to impose new 50% tariffs on $20 billion worth of Canadian goods, with Canada poised to retaliate.
On Saturday, Google Maps announced it was complying with Trump’s decision, explaining that it updates Google Maps to reflect the name changes in official government sources. In the U.S., that’s the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS). The updated map will only be shown to users in the U.S., while those in Canada will see Lake Ontario, and those outside of the two countries will see both names.
Both Apple Maps and Google Maps previously changed the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America last year, after Trump issued a similar name-changing executive order.
As of Monday morning, Apple Maps has yet to rename the Great Lake to Lake America and has not issued a statement about its plans.
MapQuest has changed hands several times over the years, having been acquired by AOL shortly after going public. It then ended up with Verizon for a time, as a result of Verizon’s acquisition of AOL. In 2019, Verizon sold MapQuest to internet advertising company System1.
MapQuest’s app has been downloaded 687,000 times worldwide this year so far, up 29% year-over-year, SensorTower estimated. Since 2012, MapQuest has been downloaded 24.4 million times, with 97% of those installs coming from the U.S.
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A hot potato: Spot, the robotic quadruped from Boston Dynamics, has been used in numerous professions over the years, but its most controversial application could be on the way. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is set to spend $2 million on the robot dogs, which could support officers by remotely assessing environments before they enter.
A new Department of Homeland Security procurement notice describes the possible purchase of Boston Dynamics SPOT robots and accessories valued at between $1 million and $2 million.
The document lists the robots’ potential uses as inspection, situational awareness, and hazard assessment in environments that may pose risks to personnel.
It adds that these capabilities helps improve officer safety, supports informed operational decision-making, and enhances DHS’s ability to respond to incidents involving dangerous, confined, unstable, or difficult-to-access areas.
Also read: Hyundai wants to sell humanoid and robot dogs through its car dealerships
There’s no mention of the robots being used to apprehend people or make arrests, which was later confirmed by a senior DHS official speaking to NBC News, though that’s unlikely to make their use by ICE any less controversial.
This won’t be the first time Spot has been used by a government agency. In 2019, the Massachusetts State Police bomb squad leased one of the robots for use as a “mobile remote observation device.” It was sent to inspect suspicious objects and dangerous locations, taking part in at least two incidents.
The NYPD later deployed a heavily modified Spot known as Digidog. The robot was used for reconnaissance during a 2020 incident in which a gunman barricaded himself inside a basement, and again the following year to investigate a house during a reported home invasion before officers entered.
Digidog reportedly completed around six missions without harming civilians, but footage of the robot in action prompted a backlash over surveillance and the increasingly Black Mirror-like appearance of modern policing. The NYPD terminated its $94,000 lease in 2021, only to bring Digidog back two years later. The department acquired two of the robots for $750,000, saying they would only be deployed in life-threatening situations such as bomb threats.
Spot also has a history with the US military. An early version was tested by the Marines as a potential load-carrying and ground-reconnaissance platform. While it was much quieter than Boston Dynamics’ gas-powered AlphaDog, Spot had to be monitored continuously and could carry only around 40 pounds of equipment. Those limitations meant the military ultimately shelved the project.
Boston Dynamics prohibits customers from using Spot to harm or intimidate people, warning that it will take “appropriate measures to mitigate that misuse.” Even if it believes this doesn’t apply to ICE, the company will have to decide whether up to $2 million in sales will be worth the bad publicity.
In a display case on the lower level of the Faraday Museum at the Royal Institution in London, there’s an unassuming stack of gray metal discs and blotting paper. It’s not at all obvious that this humble object is the starting point of today’s multibillion-dollar global battery industry. The object’s invention in 1799 grew out of a disagreement that Alessandro Volta—the Italian physicist for whom the unit of measurement for electrical potential is named—had with his friend Luigi Galvani over a dead frog.
The Debate Over Animal Electricity
Galvani was a well-respected Italian physician. In the 1770s, he began investigating the use of electricity to stimulate the muscles of dissected frogs. Armed with an electrostatic generator and an early type of capacitor called a Leyden jar, he was able to create a charge, store it, and then zap his animal specimens at will. He was intrigued when the frog legs twitched as if they were still alive. He spent the last three decades of the 18th century studying the phenomenon, and in 1791, he published De viribus electricitatis in motu musculari commentarius (Commentary on the Effect of Electricity on Muscular Motion).
Luigi Galvani spent decades investigating what he believed to be a natural electric force emanating from animals. Universal History Archive/Getty Images
Galvani saw the frog as embodying an “animal electricity,” an innate vital force that activated nerves and muscles, similar to what had been observed in (living) electric eels and torpedo rays. For Galvani, the frog was an electrical machine analogous to a Leyden jar. The brain was the source of the electrical charge; the nerves conducted the electrical fluid; and the muscles stored opposite charges. The illustrations in his 1791 book are fabulous—frog legs spread all over his laboratory table!
Galvani was wrong in thinking that his frogs were electrical machines, but he was right that the muscle contractions were caused by electric signals.SSPL/Getty Images
At first, Volta, chair of physics at the University of Pavia, concurred with his friend. But after beginning his own experiments, he concluded that Galvani was wrong and that the frog generated no electricity at all. He thought of the frog as nothing more than an electroscope, an instrument to indicate the presence of an electrical charge. Volta posited that the source of the charge Galvani observed came from two different metals in contact with the frog. He termed this “metallic electricity.”
Alessandro Volta came to disagree with Galvani’s theory of animal electricity.Apic/Getty Images
To prove his point, Volta created an “artificial electric organ.” He stacked alternating discs of copper and zinc, separated by cardboard, blotting paper, or cloth soaked in brine or acid. When the top and bottom plates were connected, an electric current flowed through the stack. As opposed to a Leyden jar, which is essentially a capacitor that can store an electric charge and release it in a brief powerful discharge, his stack of discs generated its own electricity through a chemical reaction and delivered a sustained low-current output.
Volta didn’t publicly demonstrate or announce his artificial electric organ until after Galvani died in 1798. But when he finally did, in 1799, it immediately began upending science. Just six weeks after Volta wrote to the Royal Society about his invention, the English scientists William Nicholson and Anthony Carlisle used a voltaic pile to run a current through water to separate it into hydrogen and oxygen. They had discovered chemical electrolysis. Humphry Davy later used a large voltaic pile to isolate a number of elements, including potassium, sodium, calcium, strontium, and barium. Early piles petered out after a few hours. Users who stacked up more metal discs to make more powerful piles found the weight of the discs squeezed out the moisture in the paper or cloth.
Invented in 1799, Volta’s “artificial electric organ” (later known as the voltaic pile) was the first battery. Volta presented this one to Michael Faraday in 1814.Royal Institution of Great Britain/Science Source
One of the most enthusiastic users of the voltaic pile was Galvani’s nephew, Giovanni Aldini, who spent much of his career defending his uncle’s ideas. Aldini created spectacles across Europe in which he used voltaic piles to shock the carcasses of livestock and, occasionally, the bodies of recently executed convicts. Vivid descriptions in the popular press, as well as Aldini’s own writings, raised the question of whether electricity could bring the dead back to life. Mary Shelley provided her answer in her 1818 novel, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. In an introduction to an 1831 edition, Shelley cites galvanism as one of her inspirations for the monster’s reanimation process.
Beyond Winners and Losers in Scientific Debates
Scientists and historians share a common trait: They like stories with clear winners and losers. The narrative of competition helps drive a narrative of progress that makes it look like humanity is always moving forward. In the case of Galvani and Volta, Volta is usually depicted as the clear winner in the debate over animal versus metallic electricity. The Encyclopedia Britannica goes as far as to write that “with his announcement of the first electric battery in 1800, victory was assured for Volta.”
But both science and history are more nuanced than that. In fact, Galvani and Volta were both partially right and partially wrong. There was no universal force of animal electricity, but Galvani was correct that electrical signals caused muscle contractions, which he discussed in his anonymous 1794 publication Dell’uso e dell’attività dell’arco conduttore nella contrazione dei muscoli (On the Use and Activity of the Conductive Arch in the Contraction of Muscles). Volta was right to push back on Galvani’s animal electricity theory, but he was wrong that electrophysiological effects require two different types of metal, or any metal at all; the circuit in the voltaic pile was closed by the wet paper or cloth.
It seems a little presumptuous for the Encyclopedia Britannica to declare Volta the winner and Galvani the loser. Volta definitely thought his friend was wrong, but he waited until after Galvani’s death to make his views public. It’s closer to the truth to say they were both genuinely curious to understand the nature of electricity. In the process, they unknowingly helped develop different fields of inquiry: electrophysiology for Galvani and electrochemistry and battery science for Volta.
Such an outcome is actually quite common in scientific disagreements. For example, Isaac Newton’s dispute with Christiaan Huygens over the nature of light—did light consist of particles, or corpuscles, as Newton termed them, or waves, as Huygens contested—breaks down today into quantum optics and classical optics. Similarly, Louis Pasteur’s and Justus von Liebig’s debate over fermentation (microorganisms versus chemical decomposition) led to two complementary fields: microbiology and biochemistry.
Maybe instead of looking for winners and losers, we would be better off expanding our horizons and considering the multiple paths of inquiry and discovery. Writing in 1816, toward the end of his career, Volta graciously acknowledged Galvani’s pioneering work, saying “it contains one of the most beautiful and surprising discoveries and the germ of many others.” What new revelations are waiting to develop out of today’s scientific debates?
Part of a continuing series looking at historical artifacts that embrace the boundless potential of technology.
An abridged version of this article appears in the September 2026 print issue as “The First Battery.”
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Verdict
A portable, easy-to-use sound machine which is let down by its mediocre at best sound quality. Despite having the widest volume range of any machine we’ve tested, it doesn’t make up for the constant static and looping.
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Cordless machine, rechargeable with USB-C
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Six different sound profiles
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Rechargeable, portable, doubles as a nightlight
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Sound quality is poor, with regular looping and static
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Too expensive for the quality at full price
Introduction
It’s a proven fact that babies respond well to white and pink noise after birth. As a first-time mum, it’s one of the reasons I’ve been looking into white noise machines in the hopes of improving my co-sleeping environment, but with so many options to choose from, working out what to buy is a bit of a minefield.
There are plenty of baby-specific options out there from the Ewan Deluxe, the SnuzCloud, and the Luna Dream Machine, but I wanted to try something that’s catered to adults too just to see if there are any major differences between the two, especially when it comes to things like sound quality.
That’s where the Groov-e Serenity comes in – a sleep aid, which is designed to give you and your family a restful night’s sleep. Unlike the others I am testing, this is the only noise machine that can’t be suspended, and acts more like a night light.
Design and Features
- Looks a bit like an Amazon Echo
- Unimposing design
The Serenity looks a little bit like a third generation Amazon Echo Dot. It’s small, circular, lays flat on a table, and has several buttons sitting on its surface. A LED ring surrounds it, acting as a night light when enabled.
It’s fairly unimposing and sits quite nicely on a bedside table, more so because it’s cordless too. I had mine placed there – next to my next-to-me crib – and didn’t really think much about it unless the light was turned on.
As for ease of use, the Serenity is pretty straightforward: the power button and light sits at the bottom, the volume buttons either side, which are then flanked by the six sound options, and the timer at the top. Getting used to these controls can take time, but once you know your preferred sounds and settings, you’ll memorise where each button is and be able to switch it on in the dark.
Sound-wise, the Serenity comes with six different profiles: white noise, calm, relax, ocean, forest, and rain.
I’ll be honest, I found the sound quality of the speaker quite bad, especially with harsher noises, so I spent most of my time listening to either white noise or forest for sleep and relaxation, respectively. I’ll elaborate on the quality in a minute, but I found the speaker disrupting my already precious moments of sleep more often than not.
If you do find a sound that you like, you can set a 15/30/60 minute timer to turn the speaker off once you’ve dropped off. This is a little bit abrupt, but similar to others in the group test. You can leave it to continuously play too, by either not setting a timer and relying on the battery or by plugging it in and leaving it on.
The LED ring can also be used as a night light or a relaxation device. You can either have this switched on as a solid white light or in a breathing mode, which pulsates every few seconds or so. I would have liked to have had the option to change the colour, but I’ll admit the white light is handy in the middle of the night – especially to check if the baby is stirring. Frustratingly, there’s no option to just turn on the light. You can turn the volume all the way down, but that requires extra button presses and the risk of noise.
Sound Quality
- One of the more restrained machines tested
- Weak sound
Since the Serenity is designed to be placed on a flat surface – unlike the other white noise machines in our group test, which could all be suspended – we placed the machine on a table next to our bed and baby’s next-to-me crib. The distances are consistent with our other tests, though, just to make comparisons easier.
Here’s what I found:
30cm min volume
30cm max volume
100cm min volume
100cm max volume
200cm min volume
200cm max volume
38 dB
64 dB
33 dB
59 dB
31 dB
57 dB
At its quietest, the Serenity is one of the more restrained machines that we’ve tested – only the Snuzcloud manages a lower minimum volume across all three distances. That makes it a good option if you’re after something gentle for co-sleeping setups.
But when you turn the dial up, the Serenity is capable of outputting maximum volume readings similar to the Ewan Deluxe, the loudest machine in our test group, and the gap between the two volumes is the widest (a 26 dB swing) we’ve measured.
However, while the Serenity has range, the sound quality is the weakest of the machines I’ve tested. Since the sound is coming from a very small speaker on one side of the machine, I’ve found that there’s a lot more static clouding the audio due to the vibrations caused by being placed on a flat surface – something that’s particularly noticeable in ‘relax’ mode. There’s also audible looping on some profiles like forest, which can be distracting.
Safety
- Can get quite loud
- No child lock
Since the Serenity isn’t developed with babies in mind, you’ll need to make some considerations when using it around little ones. These largely come down to placement and volume.
As it’s designed to be placed on a flat surface and can get quite loud, you’ll need to make sure that it’s out of reach of little hands and at a volume that is safe for them. Obviously there’s no child lock on this device either, so that’s worth considering too.
Just because it’s not designed for children doesn’t mean you can’t use it in a nursery setting – you just have to be careful, as with all electrical devices.
Battery Life
The Serenity is packed with a 400mAh battery, which gives up to eigtht hours of runtime. If you’re using the timer function, you’ll get multiple uses out of the white noise machine before needing to recharge it. If you want it on all night, though, you can just plug it in and use it at the same time to get you through a full night.
It goes without saying that if you have the LED lights on too, the battery life will be less than eight hours.
Final Thoughts
The Serenity does the basics well – it’s compact, portable, cordless and rechargeable, making it easy to move around or take away. The LED light is a nice touch – especially when used as a night light – and the three timer settings give you reasonable flexibility for planning night time routines. However, it is let down by its small, single-sided speaker, which introduces noticeable static, particularly on relax mode, and there’s audible looping on profiles like forest that become distracting the longer you listen to it.
At full price, we can’t recommend the machine, especially since it retails similarly to the Snuzcloud and Luna Dream Machine, but we might consider it if the price was slashed.
How We Test
We test every white noise machine thoroughly in the appropriate setting. We check how loud the machine is, its sound quality, and safety – especially if it’s marketed for babies – and its battery life. We will always tell you what we find and we never, ever accept money to review a product.
- Used for over a week in a bedroom setting
- Thorough testing and checking safety compliance
FAQs
It lasts approximately eight hours per charge, but you can enable continuous play by plugging it in overnight.
Ocean, Forest, Rain, Relax, Calm, and White Noise.
The Serenity is not designed with babies in mind. It can work as a general sound machine in a nursery, but it doesn’t have baby specific features that many products like Ewan Deluxe and SnuzCloud have.
For one more day, Tim Cook is still the CEO of Apple. Despite foibles, he was the right man in the right place to make Apple the financial and cultural juggernaut it is today. John Ternus is too.
Since my first Apple II in 1979, there have been many Apple CEOs, many philosophies behind Apple. Jobs’ was apparent in the 80s, and then again in his iCEO/CEO days.
And then he got sick. He made his last, best decision for Apple before he did.
He made Tim Cook the CEO of Apple.
Cook’s era begins in 2011
Cook’s first keynote was rough. It would take him about two years to get as smooth at presentation as Jobs was.
I think intentionally, he never tried a Jobsian reality distortion field approach.
When Cook took those keys, the iPhone wasn’t as big as it would be just a few years later when the iPhone 6 shipped. That blew the doors off the place.
He also had the early iPad to deal with and advance. And then, the first project without any real involvement from Steve Jobs, the Apple Watch, shipped.
He’s been hailed and pilloried over the years for the same reason, he wasn’t Steve Jobs. Apple didn’t need another Steve Jobs after Apple wasn’t first to a MP3 player or to a smartphone.
They needed a Tim Cook, after Apple wasn’t the voice of the revolution anymore. They needed a guy to drive Apple’s logistics and culture into the stratosphere, where it is today.
For everybody who thinks that Steve Jobs was right about everything, as a reminder, he named Cook to be CEO. And it worked out pretty well.
Not parasocial, not social
I’ve had close encounters with Apple’s two great CEOs. The first was with Steve Jobs, when I was hired for a games evangelism role inside Apple in 2001. The offer was tended, I was packing up my family to move, and in about a 40-word conversation, he handed me off to his assistant to tell me that the role was gone.
I wasn’t public-facing with Apple writing when Steve Jobs died. I did a lot of discussions and briefings in DC with mostly military folks about what it might mean, so I was still very immersed and had a lot to do that day and week afterwards.
The second Apple CEO close encounter was with Cook. This was in very late 2011, almost 10 years to the day after the Jobs call, very soon after he took over. I don’t remember the day, but it was after Thanksgiving and before the feds shut down for Christmas.
The iPad was relatively fresh, and the Department of Defense was considering them for use. Having been a submariner and a consultant, I was invited to a big meeting one Thursday night in DC.
As it turns out, the Department of Defense, specifically the Department of the Navy, didn’t like the Wi-Fi on it. There were concerns that it might be an issue with RF emissions control, and therefore impactibg detectability on underway ships and submarines.
Tim was in town for some lobbying effort or other, I forget which. I still wasn’t doing this job facing the internet yet, that would take another six months.
He and I very briefly exchanged pleasantries in a meeting room. A panel discussion about the iPad Wi-Fi “issue” in was about to start, but he was ushered out by his assistants before the discussions started. This left us with folks from the Reston, VA government support office and a few engineers from Cupertino.
And that was it. One of Tim’s many assistants reached out after my daughter died and I wrote about how my Apple Watch helped get a heart condition diagnosed. That was more a sympathy call than anything else.
John Ternus is his own man, influenced by Cook’s shadow
I’ve been asked a few times about what I expect from John Ternus as Apple CEO. I’ve mostly said “expect a very Cook-ian company for at least four years.”
It’s too early to tell what John is going to be like in a year or two. All that’s certain is that he’s got big shoes to fill.
He’s not an operations guy, he’s an engineer, mostly. He’s had his hands in all of Apple’s hardware for at least a decade, which is a good foundation.
He’s got a $4 trillion dollar company, who righted the wrongs of late-Intel hardware for most users mostly under Ternus’ hardware direction. He’s being handed an absolutely commanding mobile ecosystem, that he had less to do with, but not nothing.
Apple’s quarterly revenue from Q1 2012 to the present
The folding iPhone is about to ship albeit about 10 years after the first folding smartphone shipped. And Apple’s main money-maker for the rest of the year, the iPhone 18 Pro, is in days too.
This is not a Disneyesque CEO turnover. I still think that Bob Iger handed off to Bob Chapek, seeing the COVID storm on the horizon and other cultural and structural issues in that massive company.
After all, COVID had been brewing inside Apple’s and Disney’s supply chain in September of 2019, before it hit the US. Iger knew it was coming and was going to be a problem.
And on COVID, I think Cook stared that down better than Jobs would have. I suspect the latter would enforce his own timetables, global pandemic be damned, to the detriment of the company.
The RAM and SSD commodity pricing as of August 2026 that facing the new CEO are COVID-esque from a pricing and value destruction perspective, and will be for years, but not insurmountable. It just needs a whole lot of spending money, patience, and time.
I suspect Tim will be working that as a geopolitical problem as Apple Executive Chairman tomorrow, and going forward.
Jobs was Jobs. Cook mostly got allowed to be Cook by Apple fans, but he was true to himself, bedamned the complaints that he wasn’t Jobs.
Let Ternus be Ternus. Don’t decry that he isn’t Jobs or Cook, he’s not really listening anyway.
No matter what happens, it’s going to be interesting.
Apple was doomed in the ’90s when bean-counters ran the company. Things were bad, and the Sears/CompUSA Performa strategy just did not work. Then it wasn’t when Steve Jobs came back and pulled the cloth off the iMac when the company was the voice of the revolution.
Then, in the minds of some, it was doomed again when Tim Cook took over, right after Apple stopped being the voice of the revolution and was instead a dominant force with iPod and a growing dominance with iPhone under the last years of Steve Jobs.
Apple won, it needed Tim Cook to evolve, and Steve Jobs knew it.
And it’s not doomed tomorrow, or for the next 16 years, under John Ternus’ control.
Tim, I’m going to miss the prayer-hands at every event, they were fun. I’m going to miss the exuberant good morning, good afternoon, and one single good evening.
It’s been fun covering you for 22 years between your two temporary stints and your CEO tenure, for the feds, for MacNN, and for AppleInsider.
There’s nothing I love more than testing a tech company’s claims. I used to host a CNET YouTube series called Breaking Point, where I got to do what most people try to avoid: torture their tech. That meant purposely dropping thousands of dollars’ worth of phones on the ground, dunking them in water and pushing them to their limits.
So when Apple released its first water-resistant iPhone in 2016, I thought, “Game on!”
It’s hard to imagine now, but before the iPhone 7, a splash of water could make your Apple phone useless. Its IP67 rating means it can withstand 30 minutes in 1 meter of water (about 3 feet). To test it, I took the iPhone 7 for a “swim” in the pool at my old San Francisco apartment building, along with then CNET senior editor Sean Hollister, and filmed the whole thing.
We ended up testing it beyond its limits and didn’t exactly follow all the care instructions. Spoiler alert: The iPhone mostly survived, but it did come away with a battle scar or two.
At the time, I was blissfully unaware that just because a phone is fine after being underwater doesn’t mean it escaped damage. Chlorinated pool water and ocean saltwater can slowly corrode the materials inside a phone, even after it’s dried out. That wouldn’t kill a phone right away, but it would shorten its lifespan. Water damage (intentional or not) will void Apple’s warranty.
Looking back at this 10-year-old video of Hollister and me throwing an iPhone 7 into a pool is ironic. Instead of taking my phone on more water-related adventures, safe in the knowledge that my tech should be fine, I’m careful with my iPhone around water. Less fun, yes, but more informed.
Watch my full Did the iPhone 7 Survive Our Water Test? video down below.
Tech
Some Galaxy S26 Ultra owners are still facing the red tint issue after installing the recent fix
Samsung’s software fix for the Galaxy S26 Ultra‘s red tint issue started rolling out last week, but it isn’t working for all affected owners and is reportedly causing new display quirks for some.
Some Galaxy S26 Ultra owners are still seeing red
Samsung originally announced the fix earlier this month, saying the red tint came from a calibration issue and not a hardware defect. At the time, the company urged users to visit a local service center for a display calibration or wait for an over-the-air update. That update landed last week, but it doesn’t seem to resolve the issue for all users.
According to Newsway, some owners say the red tint persists following the update, while others have reported a tint along the edges. A few users who took their phones in for calibration at a service center have highlighted different problems, including colored spots near the edges and reddening at the top and bottom.
What Samsung is telling affected users
Samsung’s advice for anyone still seeing the red tint is to turn off display features like Adaptive color tone, Color correction, Color filter, Extra dim, and Eye comfort shield to check whether that clears it. If the tint persists, the company has directed users to visit a service center for further evaluation and guidance.
The situation has left many early adopters in a difficult position. When complaints first surfaced, Samsung reassured customers that a software update would resolve the issue without requiring panel replacements. However, recent user reports suggest that software adjustments alone may not be enough for every affected device.
Samsung has not officially responded to the new batch of complaints that surfaced following the update, and the company has yet to confirm how many units are affected overall. For now, owners who are still dealing with the red tint after installing the patch have little recourse beyond visiting an authorized service center or holding out for a follow-up patch.
The Hubble telescope has an almost legendary status. Over the last three decades, Hubble gave us some of the most spectacular close-ups of the universe ever captured, and now, NASA’s newest space telescope wants to see the bigger picture. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope successfully launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy from Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 7:26 a.m. EDT on August 30. Roman is now beginning a roughly three-month journey toward the Sun-Earth L2 point, nearly a million miles away, where it will spend its primary five-year mission surveying huge portions of the cosmos.
Roman carries a 2.4-meter primary mirror, the same diameter as Hubble’s, but its Wide Field Instrument can capture a field of view at least 100 times larger than Hubble’s. NASA expects it to use that combination of sharpness and scale to map billions of galaxies, study dark matter and dark energy, and discover enormous numbers of previously unknown worlds.
Imagine Hubble with panoramic vision
Roman won’t be replacing the Hubble or the James Webb Space Telescope. Webb is extraordinarily good at staring deeply into relatively small sections of the cosmos, while Roman will work like a survey machine. It can sweep across enormous areas while retaining the resolution needed to pick out distant objects.
NASA has previously illustrated the difference rather dramatically. In one simulated region containing millions of galaxies, Hubble would need roughly 85 years to map the area at the same depth. Roman could do it in about 63 days. This speed will help Roman construct an enormous 3D picture of the universe and track how galaxies have been distributed across cosmic history. Scientists can then use those patterns to investigate some of the universe’s biggest mysteries, like dark matter and dark energy.
According to the Reuters report, the roughly $4 billion observatory could study more than two billion galaxies over its mission. Aside from this, Roman will also be hunting exoplanets. NASA expects its surveys to uncover around 100,000 exoplanets, including worlds found through gravitational microlensing, where the gravity of an object passing in front of a distant star temporarily magnifies its light. Its experimental Coronagraph Instrument will also test technology intended to block overwhelming starlight so astronomers can directly study planets and planet-forming disks nearby.
From government optics to the dark universe
Key optics in the telescope, including its primary mirror, were originally made available to NASA by the National Reconnaissance Office. L3Harris subsequently reshaped the mirror and built upon the inherited hardware to turn it into the wide-field infrared observatory now heading into deep space.
Roman launched nine months ahead of schedule. Its baseline mission lasts five years, while the spacecraft has a 10-year mission goal. It was built to answer questions we’ve been struggling with for decades, like: Why is the universe expanding faster? Where is all the invisible matter shaping galaxies? How common are planetary systems like ours?
Singapore has committed S$220M, about $173M, to its fintech sector over the next three years. It made the announcement three days after KPMG reported that private investment in Singaporean fintech had fallen to its weakest first half in roughly a decade.
The timing is not a coincidence, and nobody is pretending otherwise. Gan Kim Yong, who is deputy prime minister, trade and industry minister and chairman of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, set out the commitment on Monday.
The money runs through the fourth iteration of the Financial Sector Technology and Innovation scheme, which has existed since 2015 and has backed more than 350 projects. FSTI 4.0 splits into six tracks covering institutional innovation, AI adoption, infrastructure and platforms, and talent.
The talent track has the most concrete commitment attached. At least 1,000 fintech internships will be created over the three years, with the stipends co-funded, which is a direct intervention in a labour market rather than a grant programme.
“These efforts will help our financial institutions, fintech firms, and workers innovate, scale, and build capabilities to seize emerging opportunities,” Gan said. He framed the AI opportunity in terms of capture rather than defence, adding that the financial industry is not a zero-sum game.
The private market has been telling a bleaker story. Singaporean fintech companies raised $499m across 53 deals in the first half of 2026, down from $1.45bn across 97 deals in the same period last year.
The composition is worse than the total. A single $320m cross-border payments round in June accounted for nearly two-thirds of the entire half, which means the rest of the ecosystem shared roughly $179m between it.
Deal count fell less steeply than value, from 97 to 53, which describes a market still doing business at smaller cheque sizes rather than one that has stopped. Early-stage activity holding up while growth rounds disappear is the usual shape of a downturn.
Split by sector, the pattern is familiar. AI and machine learning took $365.9m across 18 deals while digital assets managed 27 deals for $95.5m, so crypto is still doing volume, and AI is taking the money.
None of this makes Singapore a small market. It hosts around 1,800 fintech firms employing about 10,000 people, and the sector took roughly S$3bn during 2025 before the drop.
The decline is also not peculiar to Singapore, which is the more useful context. British fintech funding fell to its own decade low this year, and European rounds have been landing against a broader plunge rather than a recovery.
Singapore also has a specific reason to act rather than wait. Its financial centre competes directly with Hong Kong, Dubai and London for the same firms, and a hub that looks becalmed for two years does not simply resume where it left off.
What differs is the response. Britain reached for a £1bn private growth fund to close a gap it had identified, while Singapore is deploying a comparatively modest sum of public money into infrastructure, adoption and people.
S$220m will not replace a billion dollars of vanished private capital, and it is not designed to. Co-funding an internship or an AI deployment lowers the cost of trying something, which is a different instrument from writing a cheque into a cap table.
Whether that works depends on what caused the drop. If investors have simply repriced fintech everywhere, cheaper experimentation keeps companies alive until sentiment turns, and if Singapore is losing ground to a rival hub, a talent subsidy will not fix it.
FSTI has at least the advantage of a record. Eleven years and 350 projects is long enough to know what the scheme does well, which is more than most industrial policy can claim at the point of renewal.
The government is betting on the first reading. Three years, six tracks, a thousand internships, and a stated intention to be positioned when the money comes back.
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