(Nic Coury/Getty Images)

When life gives you apples

People are using iPhones longer. Apple is leaning in.

7/1/24 10:48AM

Americans, strapped for cash, skeptical of innovation and uncertain about the future, are holding onto big-ticket items like phones, cars, and homes longer.

Apple, the maker of America’s most-popular smartphone, is doing its best to position this as a feature and not a bug.

“We are continuously striving to increase product longevity through new design and manufacturing technologies, ongoing software support, and expanded access to repair services,” the company wrote in a white paper released last week called “Longevity by Design.” As proof the company cites the “hundreds of millions of iPhones that have been in use for more than 5 years,” a 38% decline in out-of-warranty repair rates from 2015 to 2022, and six years of software updates for iPhones.

It’s true that people are holding onto iPhones longer, but it's not just because the devices last — changes in carrier subsidies and fewer notable hardware innovations contribute to the trend.

Making reliable, long-lasting products is good for both the environment and Apple’s brand perception. But it’s also true that Apple’s services division notches much higher gross profit margins than hardware. In other words, selling new phones just isn’t as likely to directly drive growth to Apple’s bottom line as it once did, so Apple can afford to spin people not buying new iPhones as a good thing.

Notably the paper doesn’t mention AirPods, which considering the rate at which they’re lost or broken, can seem like a subscription business.

For what it’s worth, Apple recently made it a little easier for individuals and third parties to repair its phones, but only after years of fighting with activists and lawmakers. Even in this latest white paper, where it touts its improvements on repair, the company notes, “optimizing for repairability alone may not yield the best outcome for our customers or the environment.”

Also, it’s not like Apple isn’t pushing for people to buy new iPhones either. Apple is hoping that its AI upgrades will nudge consumers to spring for a new iPhone, since it will only be available on iPhone 15 Pro or later.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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