Claude can now create and edit files (anthropic.com)
379 points by meetpateltech 9h ago 225 comments
The Dying Dream of a Decentralized Web (spectrum.ieee.org)
124 points by warrenm 5h ago 133 comments
Apple Debuts iPhone 17
62 excerionsforte 165 9/9/2025, 6:13:06 PM apple.com ↗
Makes the Mac Mini look weird now with 256 GB base storage.
Pretty shameful of Google to stick to 128 GB on the Pixel 10.
Compare the New iPhone Models - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45186294 - Sept 2025 (95 comments)
iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45186044 - Sept 2025 (42 comments)
iPhone Air - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45186015 - Sept 2025 (431 comments)
1. Freedom. I should be able to build and run apps on it without the platform holder having a barrier on it.
2. Privacy. The phone shouldn't be an object to track me for better ad sales or any other purpose.
Of course, priority 1 has until recently always led to Android while priority 2 has always led to Apple.
But with the upcoming announced changes where google is going to require registration and signing for even third party sideloaded apps, while at the same time the EU is forcing Apple to open up and allow sideloading, it seems pretty clear that in the near future both Apple and Google's policies regarding point 1 are going to converge. On a position less free than Android has hitherto been, and less free than I would like, but unfortunately they are the two options on the market.
So with priority 1 no longer a differentiating factor, it comes down to priority 2.
I've used both Android and iOS over the years, as while my personal phones have always been Android, my employer provided phones have always been iOS. I think I do prefer the Android user experience and have used enough of both that that's not just a factor of which I'm accustomed to, but it's also not the huge difference it once was for a lot of apps.
Right now I'm using a Pixel 7 Pro and I might weigh sitting it out another year, but my USB-C port is failing and I'm also watching the pixel battery issues creep up the model range to newer and newer models...
It will be another three or four years yet though as my SE is only three years old.
For a phone similar to the feature set of the original iPhone, you can get a Jelly Pro today for $100.
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I think modern smart phones are pretty remarkably un-fragile compared to 20 years ago before the iPhone ($300-700 for a Symbian with a tiny plastic screens that got scratched super fast) or even 10-ish years ago with much more fragile screen glass and cases. Last phone I did major damage to was my HTC Evo in 2012.
(That Nokia N95 was in 2007 dollars, too!)
Wonder if we'll ever see folding phones. I'm not concerned with the thickness but the overall foot print that's pocketable would be amazing.
There are some great renders in the first post in the thread, and towards the end you can see 3d printed mocks [0] of foldable devices. Very cool.
0: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/rumoured-iphone-fold-si...
I would assume this means Apple laptops with integrated cellular modems are on the near horizon.
Because Qualcomm charges a percentage of sale price for use of their modem.
https://9to5mac.com/2025/02/23/gurman-apple-modems-integrati...
Perhaps people who buy a MacBook are likely to have an iPhone in their pocket that will function as a hotspot and iPads are much more often used by people who are otherwise outside of Apple's ecosystem?
Thinking through my own use case, I just use my phone for messaging, maps, and the occasional app, so I'm not going to need a big screen for consuming content. I also don't want to spend a lot of money on a phone, since I don't need any fancy features. So perhaps that intersection of use cases doesn't make much sense to target?
The sales back up my statements.
Yes I romanticize about an iPhone 17 mini pro but in the end I like being able to watch some downloaded content on a plane without having to bring an iPad from time to time and I'm not going to do that on a tiny screen.
It’s a bit like selling increasingly carbonated water and then selling slightly less carbonated water and pretending that it was still water that you were selling- and using the data (of nobody buying it) to tell everyone that “nobody likes the still water; so we will continue only selling carbonated and carbonated+.”
I don't get why people make statements like this.
6: 2.64 (W) x 5.44 (H) x .27 (D)
6s: 2.64 (W) x 5.44 (H) x .28 (D)
13 mini: 2.53 (W) x 5.14 (H) x 0.30 (D)
The only dimension in which the mini was larger than the 6 or 6s was in depth, and that was just barely. It was smaller otherwise.
It did have a larger display, but it fit it into a smaller device.
----
All iPhones before the iPhone 6 were smaller than the 12 and 13 minis. The 1st gen SE was smaller. Everything from 6 on, including the 2nd and 3rd gen SEs, have been larger, though barely for the SEs. The downside to the SEs compared to the minis was that they have smaller displays than the minis.
Betrays the point anyway: the ideal size was the 5 and it was nowhere near that, even by your official numbers (which I would guess are excluding the rounded edges maybe? - regardless, not the point)
So you did that and still wrote that the minis were larger? Or you did that after I pointed out that the minis were smaller?
People who want cheap iPhones buy older models. You get better specs buying a used or NOS premium model than a new budget model.
Either too wide (1x) or too narrow (4x), as seen in the live stream video, which was recorded with the iPhone 17 Pro.
I am currently on the 13 Pro, I find the 3x mode ideal for portrait photos and videos.
Is it only me with this impression? Could someone help me to jump back into Apple's reality distortion field?
That said, I too like a 70 mm lens, but I long ago got used to just moving closer to or further away from subjects to take photos with dedicated cameras depending on what lens I had on.
Still good, still works.
Being able to turn Liquid Glass off to sth like flat design would be nice but this probably won’t happen.
Now when it comes to the event itself, it felt so cartoonish.
Apple switched iPhone 17 Pro from Titanium (used in earlier versions) to aerospace-grade Aluminium for Superior Heat Dissipation.
But for the iPhone Air, they are using Titanium because it's lightweight, strong, and durable.
Aluminum is definitely a softer metal, so using aerospace-grade aluminum makes sense. So, is Titanium not a good thermal conductor? If it is not, then why is it used in the iPhone Air?
Sorry! Their choice is not clear to me. Can someone throw light on it?
Phone material choices come down to which compromises you will settle for.
There are similar compromises with types of glass chosen. One type is more scratch resistance, but more prone to shatter from falls, and vice versa.
I think I could probably squeeze more life out of my phone, but the 17 has a nicer camera, me and my wife are noticing our relatives with newer iPhones have photographs that look slightly (I meant to write NOTICEABLY here) better. As we raise our first child, having a quality camera is definitely important to us.
I was really tempted by the iPhone Air, but the Pro has better camera features. I am actually really excited to see what they will do for the iPads. If they release a thin iPac Mini similar to the iPhone Air, I would immediately buy it. I am not usually a fan of thin, but something in me has always wanted a thin iPad Mini, not sure why, but I'm waiting for it still.
Great demo, the most impressive demo had to have been the Airpod Pros translation piece.
Edit: Needed to annotate that I wrote 'slightly better' but its not just slightly, we both visually noticed a different in quality.
One last note, the 12 Pro was my first iPhone ever. I was on Android since 2009, every Android I had lasted about 2 years. My last one probably would have lasted me 5 years but I was tired and wanted a change at my 2 year mark. I have not regretted my decision to date.
Difference is especially startling for HDR and portraits, particularly backlight ones where the stock app does some hideous segmentation-based “enhancements”.
Just be mindful that those extra megapixels will need some extra storage.
A phone camera isn't really a camera, it's a digitally-airbrushed impression of reality. There just isn't enough light hitting the tiny sensor through the tiny lens.
I have 20 year old 5MP DLSR portrait photos that are still better than what a 120MP phone can produce, because it's the lens that counts.
However.... it's really hard to overstate the workflow and convenience aspects of shooting with a phone. (Particularly as a parent, and even moreso when I was a new parent of a small child.) The phone has the twin benefits of 1) being present almost always and 2) being immediately able to process and transmit an image to the people you might want to see it. For the 99% case, that's far more useful than even a very significant improvement in image quality. For the 1% where it matters, I can and do either hire a professional (with better equipment than my own) or make the production of dragging out my DSLR and all that it entails. This is like so many other cases where inarguable technical excellence of a sort gives way to convenience and cost issues. IOW, "Better" is not just about Image Quality.
But, I never have my Canon and it's too bulky to carry around everyday. I do carry my iPhone everywhere I go. And so, the capabilities of my iPhone camera are more important.
I imagine this is the same for the overwhelming majority of people.
I tried a Sony RX100 (1" sensor) when they first came out, optimistic about the possibility of using it for 'general purpose' photography. After all, it's small enough.
The problem was, it's a second device to carry around and keep charged. Then once you capture the image, it's largely stuck on the device until you find a way to offload your images. I briefly experimented with cables that would let me do things like transfer images from the RX100 to my (Android at the time) mobile phone, for archiving and sending to family and friends. That turned the whole thing into the sort of science fair project that I didn't have time for as the parent of a very young child. (Although in fairness, I can't think of a single time in my life when I'd have had the patience, kids or not.)
This is why, for all the arguments you can make against them as cameras, I've come to be very thankful for the amount of effort that Apple and others have made to get appealing images out of devices I always carry around anyway. I can take a set of pictures, edit them, have them automatically archived to cloud storage, and send them to whoever I want.. all with a single device I was carrying around anyway.
This leaves open the fact that the 'real' camera workflow is still an option when there's the need for higher image quality and the time (or money to hire a photographer) to take advantage of what a DSLR or the like can do.
(When I compare what I can do with my iPhone to what my parents had available to them (a 110 format camera and 35mm Nikons), I like the tradeoffs a lot better. the image quality available now is definitely better than the 110. Some of those 35mm exposures are probably better quality than what I can get out of an iPhone, but they're all stuck in albums and slides, and nobody ever looks at them. )
If you want reference tier photos for documenting family history, modern mirrorless is better. DSLR from 10-15 years ago is also still great in all but the most challenging light conditions, where you could simply use a flash.
If you are considering an expensive phone upgrade based off of the camera alone, consider buying a dedicated camera first, I say. I know the best camera is the one you have on you, etc...
Something about iOS and macOS just feels right. Any time I boot up my old Android phones they feel like a convoluted mess.
Any suggestions for me while I shop around for "tier 2" carriers? I am primarily concerned with price, and then network coverage second (I am OK with sometimes being throttled, but would prefer to avoid large gaps in any coverage).
There is a list of all the prioritization tiers (aka QCI, or premium data) on all the three main US carriers here:
https://old.reddit.com/r/NoContract/comments/1mxogtx/data_pr...
I probably experience times with deprioritization. 5G service can go from getting several hundred megabits with pretty low latencies to only getting a few megabits with potentially up to 100ms or so latency, depending on crowds. I don't recall any times where I had good signal but couldn't get any data, but definitely been in places where it'll struggle to do video chats or something at a big live event that doesn't have the extra 5G infra deployed. For example, an extra large crowd at the park for some event will probably give poor network experience but I'll otherwise get good connectivity in a modern sports arena.
In the end it's just a value proposition. Is having really fast network everywhere, all the time really that worth it to you? For many the answer is yes. But for me, on my personal device, if I'm getting poor data rates that's probably a clue I should really be putting my phone down and get back into whatever is happening in the park so I don't mind and the savings are quite nice.
1. Their international plan is garbage, and if you don’t use the international plan, you cannot usefully use them as a phone-and-SMS-over-WiFi only solution in conjunction with another carrier. Competitors like USMobile do not have this problem.
2. Their customer support and website are very bad.
Wikipedia has a solid table of U.S. MVNO's, for a good starting point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mobile_virtual_network...
I've seen all sorts of non-black (let alone matte black) iPhone rigs used for motion pictures, including white and natural titanium colors. Eg. 28 Years Later used a variety of iPhone configurations and colors.
But yeah, I'm surprised there's no black/space gray option this year. Some consumers won't buy any other color.
Try Halide with "Process Zero" if you want that, but I'm pretty sure the most popular 3p camera apps are Asian beauty apps that do far more and far worse quality processing.
Camera pixels are only one color at a time:
GGRR
BBGG
(quad-Bayer; Fujifilm uses a weirder one called X-Trans. And some of them will be missing because they're damaged or are focus pixels.)
And then you still have to do white balance and tone mapping, because your eyes do that and the camera sensor doesn't.
Overall this year seemed much better than last year.
Maybe the recent introduction of foldable phones indicates the opposite. Is it the final blip, or will something similarly disruptive happen every 5-7 years?
Discuss.
Anything else on the hardware side is mostly noise.
If I had to futurism bet, it'd be on eyeglass AR + pocket device being the next major change. With input method for that still tbd.
Use an ad blocker if you want Safari tabs to stay open longer.
And MagSafe charging and stands.
Our daughter still has an older iPhone with 60Hz and I cannot look at it. The flickery animations drive me crazy. Yet, I have had iPhones with < 120Hz screens for well over a decade.
That said, I'm sort of frustrated with iOS overall, and sorely tempted to go back to Pixels, so I can't decide.
I got my first Pixel (10 Pro XL); Only because their AI integration felt cool. My iPhone 11 Pro is still doing great overall, besides sluggishness here and there, and random Chrome crashes. I might consider upgrading to 17 now due to speed and camera upgrades. Honestly, it was not an exciting upgrade, just like their last 5.
Beyond that, I get frequent spam SMS's which are stupid. Android blocks all those. I have a Junk mail folder in email and hardly get email spam anymore. It feels like going back 20 years getting these random spam SMS's.
Finally, "glanceability" doesn't seem as good with the iPhone. One silly little thing is that if I'm using my iPhone it's sometimes very hard to see the date! If you have notifications you have to swipe down quite a bit to reveal that.
What is Thread?
> Thread is an IPv6-based, low-power mesh networking technology for Internet of things (IoT) products.
> Often used as a transport for Matter (the combination being known as Matter over Thread), the protocol has seen increased use for connecting low-power and battery-operated smart-home devices.
> Thread uses 6LoWPAN, which, in turn, uses the IEEE 802.15.4 wireless protocol with mesh communication (in the 2.4 GHz spectrum), as do Zigbee and other systems. However, Thread is IP-addressable, with cloud access and AES encryption. A BSD-licensed open-source implementation of Thread called OpenThread is available from and managed by Google.
https://www.threadgroup.org/
Edit: 16 Pro 128 GB was $999 at introduction iPhone 17 Pro 256 GB is $1099. Better for the non-Pro though - the 16 128 GB was $799, the 17 256 GB is also $799.
While the new phone might actually be “free” in one of these promotions, it’s not, naturally, because you’ve been thrown into a 36 month installment agreement separate of the cellphone service they’ve sold you on (that they also claim is “price locked” while independently raising surcharges and other fees).
Convenience comes at a cost.