Apple’s Huge Shift: Why Your Next iPhone Is Designed to Last Longer

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Apple’s Huge Shift: Why Your Next iPhone Is Designed to Last Longer Technician checks an iPhone battery health screen, referencing the EU 80% capacity target after 800 cycles.

Apple is implementing significant changes to ensure its devices last longer and remain more functional over time. These updates are largely influenced by the European Union’s (EU) new sustainability regulations, which emphasize durability, repairability, and environmental responsibility. For you, this means your iPhone, iPad, MacBook, and other Apple devices will stay reliable for extended periods, […]

The post Apple’s Huge Shift: Why Your Next iPhone Is Designed to Last Longer appeared first on Geeky Gadgets.

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Stop Buying Moms Candles. Top 7 Smarter Mother’s Day Gifts in 2026

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There’s a reason Mother’s Day gifts tend to pile up in the “I tried” category. Flowers wilt, spa vouchers go unused, and the scented candle collection grows to unreasonable proportions. What actually lands is something that fits into her daily life with ease, something she’d reach for without thinking, something that quietly signals she’s seen and loved. That standard isn’t hard to meet when the starting point is thoughtful design, the kind that observes how people actually live and fills the gaps they didn’t know were there.

This year’s roundup leans into exactly that idea. Every product here was chosen for how well it earns its place, whether that means sitting on a counter without looking out of place, or arriving with features that genuinely simplify something she does every day. Form matters as much as function, and ideally, the two are inseparable. If you’ve been putting off the search, consider this your shortcut.

Arzopa D14 Wireless Cloud Storage Digital Photo Frame

Those photos sitting three years deep in her camera roll, the ones from the holiday she keeps meaning to print, the candid from someone’s birthday that came out perfectly, deserve better than a scroll-past. The Arzopa D14 turns that ever-growing collection into a living memory gallery, one that sits on her shelf, rotates through her favorite moments, and actually gets looked at every day. It pulls photos wirelessly from a phone to a champagne gold frame that looks genuinely elegant on a shelf or bedside table, and with 8+125GB of built-in memory backed by cloud storage, there’s room for an entire family’s worth of memories without ever worrying about running out of space. The patented gold frame finish sets it apart from the sea of black plastic rectangles that tend to dominate this category, giving it the kind of presence that makes it feel like a decor choice rather than a tech gadget.

The feature that earns it a place on this list, though, is the remote transfer. Kids living in another city, a partner traveling for work, a sibling across the country, anyone in her life can upload photos or videos directly to the frame from wherever they are, and she’ll see them cycle through her display in real time. The app is designed with simplicity front and center, trimming the upload process down to just three steps from phone to frame, which means she won’t need anyone to walk her through it twice. That combination of effortless setup and ongoing remote connectivity (along with a cool 8% discount) is what separates the Arzopa D14 digital photo frame from a standard digital frame. For a Mother’s Day gift, the elevator pitch almost writes itself: she gets a beautiful object for her home, and a quiet, ongoing reminder that the people she loves are thinking of her.

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LEGO Art Claude Monet, Bridge Over a Pond of Water Lilies

Developed in collaboration with The Metropolitan Museum of Art, this 3,179-piece LEGO Art set is built around one of Monet’s most iconic works, his 1899 painting “Bridge Over a Pond of Water Lilies,” now a centerpiece of The Met’s permanent collection. The build translates Monet’s Impressionist technique into brick form with impressive fidelity, using a diverse range of LEGO elements including butterflies, flowers, and fruit to recreate the layered texture of the original. Slender willows, rounded water lilies, and the arched footbridge stretching across shimmering water are all rendered in delicate hues of green and blue that closely follow Monet’s characteristic palette. The finished piece measures roughly 20 by 16 inches and comes with a built-in wall hanging mechanism, so it goes straight from box to wall display without any additional hardware. At $249.99, it sits in a price range where it feels like a genuine gift rather than a casual impulse buy.

Rated for ages 18 and up, this is squarely positioned as an adult build, the kind that takes its time and rewards it. The LEGO Builder app offers 3D instructions to guide the process, which makes what could be an overwhelming piece count feel much more manageable. For a mother who appreciates art, has a soft spot for Impressionism, or simply enjoys a build that ends with something genuinely beautiful on her wall, this is one of the more thoughtful things on this list. The Met collaboration gives it a cultural weight that most LEGO sets don’t carry, and the fact that the original painting is one of the most recognizable works in Western art history doesn’t hurt the gifting story at all.

Second White SIMETRA AI Mirror

Skincare has always operated on a degree of faith. You buy the serum, follow the routine, hope something shifts, and repeat. The SIMETRA AI Mirror, designed by Second White, is built around the idea that guesswork in front of a mirror is a problem worth solving at the hardware level. Rather than functioning as a passive reflective surface, it reads light, image, and depth data in real time, translating what it captures into precise, measurable feedback about skin condition, texture, and change over time. The intelligence is specific to the person standing in front of it, which puts it in a different category from the generic skincare advice that tends to recycle the same four suggestions regardless of who’s asking.

What keeps this from feeling like a dermatologist’s waiting room transplanted into a bathroom is how restrained the design is. The form is calm and geometric, built around a circular mirror disc that sits beside a fluted, rounded column, with a fabric-covered base, brushed metal details, and soft edges throughout. The fluting gives the hardware body texture and warmth, grounding what could easily have read as clinical equipment in something that feels much more like a considered object. Second White describes the intent as precision and empathy coexisting within a single form, and looking at the result, that brief clearly held through to the final product. For a mother who takes her skincare seriously and appreciates when technology earns its place in a room without announcing itself, this is a genuinely compelling gift.

Bo Zhang Stretch Color Vases

Designer Bo Zhang’s Stretch Color series sits in that rare category of objects that reward you for simply being in the room with them. Built from layered acrylic and spray coloration, each vase in the series transitions from dense, saturated pigment into full transparency, causing sections of the form to visually dissolve depending on where you’re standing. From one angle it reads as a solid vessel; shift slightly, and the edges flatten into something closer to a painted surface, a gradient suspended in mid-air. The series comes in three sizes, with each scale altering how the color stretches and where the dissolution happens, so no two feel quite like the same object even within the same collection.

What makes this genuinely compelling as a gift is how it behaves over time in a space. The vases don’t simply sit in a room; they negotiate with it, stretching color, dissolving edges, and quietly asking whoever’s looking to reconsider what they’re seeing. That quality, of an object that keeps revealing itself, translates beautifully into a home where someone actually pays attention to the things around her. It has the visual intrigue of art without the remove of something untouchable, and the function of a vase without the plainness of one. For a mother who finds beauty in things that don’t immediately explain themselves, this is the kind of piece that earns a permanent spot on her shelf.

Gemstone TWS Earbuds

Wearable technology has had a persistent identity crisis for years, defaulting to plastic shells, visible sensors, and utilitarian forms that sit awkwardly against everything else a person wears. The AI Smart Gemstone Earpiece takes a genuinely different position. Rather than asking the wearer to accommodate technology, it integrates the hardware into the vocabulary of personal adornment, shaped and finished to read as jewelry before it reads as electronics. The earpieces are built around celestial gemstones, combining fine jewelry craftsmanship with AI-assisted audio in a single object that could sit comfortably alongside a pair of earrings without looking out of place. For a woman who pays attention to how things look on her, that consideration alone puts this in a separate category from anything Apple or Sony is currently shipping.

The audio capability is backed by AI that adapts to the listening environment, which makes it a legitimately capable pair of earbuds tucked inside a form that never looks like one. The design is aimed specifically at female users, and that focus shows in every detail, from the gem-forward aesthetic to the way the earpiece sits against the ear, chosen for elegance first rather than as an afterthought. It’s the kind of object that tends to invite questions, the “wait, are those earbuds?” moment that very few wearables ever manage to pull off. For a Mother’s Day gift, it lands in that appealing territory where something beautiful also turns out to be genuinely useful.

Peleg Design TriveTiles

Kitchen objects that earn their counter space tend to have a double life, useful when called upon, worth looking at when not. Peleg Design’s TriveTiles land squarely in that territory. What looks at first like a single large trivet is actually three separate pieces fitted together in a Moroccan-patterned composition, each one a puzzle-cut segment that slots into the others to form a complete decorative tile. The Mediterranean-inspired geometric patterning across the surface means they look deliberate and considered whether they’re displayed together as a unit or pulled apart for individual use across a table spread. For a mother who treats the kitchen as an extension of how she decorates the rest of her home, that distinction matters more than it might seem.

The functional thinking behind them is equally strong. Laid flat and stacked together, they serve as a single large trivet for bigger pots and dishes. Separated, each piece handles a different spot on the table independently, which makes them especially practical when multiple dishes are being served at once. The stacking design also means they store compactly, with no extra drawer space needed beyond what a single trivet would take up. It’s the kind of quiet ingenuity that tends to reveal itself gradually, the more she uses them, the more she appreciates the thought behind how they were designed. As a Mother’s Day gift, they sit at that appealing intersection of beautiful, affordable, and genuinely well considered.

BloomingTables Garden-infused Furniture

The idea of a kitchen herb garden tends to run into the same problem every time: space. A windowsill can only hold so many pots, and a separate planter competes with everything else already claiming floor or counter real estate. BloomingTables solves this by folding the garden directly into the furniture itself. The table features a planter built beneath a glass tabletop surface, turning what would otherwise be dead negative space into a fully functional growing area. Herbs, vegetables, microgreens, succulents, vining plants, the range of what can be cultivated there is genuinely broad, and the glass top means the planting below stays visible, making it a design feature rather than something hidden away. It holds the distinction of being billed as the world’s first living furniture series, with a patent pending on the concept.

For a mother who cooks seriously, tends to plants, or simply appreciates having fresh herbs within arm’s reach of the table, the appeal is fairly immediate. The design itself is minimal and clean, with the planter integrated so naturally into the table’s silhouette that it reads as intentional rather than retrofitted. As apartments shrink and outdoor growing space becomes less reliable, having greenery built into a dining table starts to feel less like a novelty and more like a genuinely smart allocation of space. It’s the kind of gift that changes something about how a room functions every single day, which is a harder brief to meet than it sounds.

The post Stop Buying Moms Candles. Top 7 Smarter Mother’s Day Gifts in 2026 first appeared on Yanko Design.

Electrolux Wants Your Kitchen to Feel Like Nature: First-Look at Milan Design Week 2026

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For roughly six months of the year, Sweden is cold enough to keep its people reliably indoors. That is long enough to matter, and long enough to shape how a Swedish design team thinks about what a kitchen surface, a kitchen color, or a kitchen appliance should feel like when it is the primary thing a person looks at during the months when the outdoors is largely inaccessible. Electrolux, drawing on research conducted across European markets, found that nature is the single most common answer when people are asked where they go for emotional restoration. The brand’s response to that finding, expressed through a design philosophy called Lagom, the Swedish concept of balance and just enough, arrived in Milan this week at Via Melzo 12 in the Porta Venezia district.

The space was staged as an argument made physical. Concrete plinths topped with living moss carried CMF swatches in muted blush, warm sand, dusty teal, and speckled stone-effect recycled plastic. A pine and wood scent developed by studio Koyia moved through the air. A breathing exercise was built into the programme, alongside a cross-country pizza competition that Turkey ultimately won. The sequence of it, material samples resting on moss, scent designed to recall a forest, appliances displayed in front of a photographic print of Scandinavian woodland, was too consistent to be coincidence. Electrolux arrived at Milan Design Week 2026 with a single, well-developed idea: that the kitchen is an emotional environment, and that the most sophisticated thing its design language can do is bring the outside in.

Designer: Electrolux

Rafael Alonso, who leads Electrolux’s Taste Design team, describes the modern kitchen plainly: a crowded space where people live, cook, manage family life, and absorb the friction of daily routine. Designing for that room means designing for that reality. Lagom, in his framing, is the response: meaningful solutions built around purpose and balance rather than specification and performance alone. The philosophy travels well beyond Sweden. Everybody needs a bit more balance in their lives, and the kitchen, as the room that absorbs the most daily activity, is where that balance is most frequently lost and most worth recovering.

Amelia Chong, based in Electrolux’s Stockholm office and leading Color, Material, Finish Design for the taste category, traces the palette back to something more concrete than trend cycles or stylistic preference. When Electrolux surveyed users across Europe about where they find emotional restoration, nature came back as the most consistent answer. For Chong’s team, that finding becomes a set of material conditions. Scandinavian light is lower in contrast and more diffused than much of Europe, and the colour preferences that emerge from living within that light tend toward the muted and the gentle. The goal is to establish colour and material in a long-lasting, timeless relationship rather than a short-term one.

The swatches at Electrolux’s showcase make that intention legible. Across the Ceramic White Colour Family, the Colour Matt Glass and Recycled Plastics range, and the anodised metal samples, the palette holds a consistent register: warm sand and dusty teal, soft blush and speckled stone-effect off-white, warm bronze and low-sheen aluminium. Several finishes are built from post-consumer recycled plastic, and the acid-etched glass surfaces carry none of the glossy visual aggression that has dominated premium kitchen aesthetics for the better part of a decade. Chrome is absent. Matte black, another recent default for high-end appliances, does not appear either. What replaces both is a surface language that reads as organic, with textures referencing stone, compressed earth, and raw ceramic.

That material thinking finds its form in a new family of conceptual small appliances. A toaster, electric kettle, coffee machine, espresso machine, and air fryer were all presented with a unified design language that feels both calm and confident. Each product shares a primary body finished in a soft, linen-like white, but the most distinctive feature is the base. A warm, speckled finish, reminiscent of granite or raw ceramic, grounds each appliance, giving it a visual and textural weight that connects it to the natural materials referenced in the CMF library. The effect is cohesive and deeply considered; the appliances feel less like industrial objects placed on a countertop and more like a collection of stoneware that has grown out of it.

This approach is not confined to the kitchen. A vacuum cleaner, displayed with the same attention to sensory detail, extends the Lagom philosophy into the broader home. Its body carries the same muted, gentle tone as the kitchen concepts, but its top surface is finished with a warm, walnut-panel wood trim. It is a simple but effective move that transforms a utility object into something closer to furniture. The design choice suggests that balance, and the deliberate presence of natural textures in everyday objects, belongs to the whole home, softening the technological footprint of our tools and integrating them more harmoniously into our living spaces.

The neuroaesthetic research informing Chong’s approach is concrete: considered colour selection can reduce perceived stress by as much as 35%, a figure that reframes what a hob surface or a coffee machine body is quietly doing in a room. They contribute actively to the sensory quality of the spaces we inhabit. In a field where brands largely compete on technology, connectivity, and performance metrics, that may be the most quietly confident thing Electrolux brought to Milan: the conviction that calm, deliberately designed, is a specification worth meeting, and that the palette which carries it was drawn from the landscape just outside the window.

The post Electrolux Wants Your Kitchen to Feel Like Nature: First-Look at Milan Design Week 2026 first appeared on Yanko Design.

Why the Audrey by CozyCo Might Be the Most Practical Tiny Home on the Market

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Most tiny homes ask you to compromise. The Audrey by Australia’s CozyCo Tiny Homes is built around the idea that you shouldn’t have to, delivering a compact, single-level build that makes efficient living look effortless. At just 7.2 metres (23.7 ft) long and mounted on a triple-axle trailer, the Audrey punches well above its footprint.

Its exterior is a clean mix of corrugated aluminium and timber-look panels, a combination that gives the home a timeless aesthetic that could slot into a bush property, a coastal block, or a suburban backyard without missing a beat. A small external box handles propane storage, keeping things tidy on the outside.

Designer: CozyCo Tiny Homes

Step inside, and the single-level layout immediately makes sense. Designed to sleep up to two people comfortably, the Audrey works equally well as a short-stay rental, a guest suite, a granny flat, or a semi-permanent retreat. The open studio configuration keeps circulation easy, while sliding glass doors flood the interior with light and make the space feel far larger than its dimensions suggest.

The build quality is where CozyCo makes its case. R2.5 insulation, VJ paneling, and double-glazed windows work together to keep thermal comfort dialed in across seasons. Gas, hot water, and air conditioning mean the Audrey handles year-round living without compromise. A storage bed rounds out the interior, removing the need for bulky furniture and keeping the floor plan clean.

For those who want to go further off-grid, CozyCo offers optional packages that include solar power systems, eco-friendly toilets, and water storage. The brand sources materials locally and builds each home to residential standards, backing every Audrey with a seven-year structural warranty and a lifetime warranty on the trailer. That’s a level of confidence that’s rare in the tiny home space.

CozyCo is an Australian outfit that brings real construction industry experience to the table, with a clear focus on builds that minimise environmental impact and maximise longevity. The Audrey is architecturally designed and finished to a premium standard, not a flat-pack workaround, but a proper home that happens to be mobile.

Whether the goal is Airbnb income, a low-maintenance guest house, or a quieter way of living, the Audrey makes a compelling argument. It’s proof that you don’t need more square footage. You need better decisions about the space you already have.

The post Why the Audrey by CozyCo Might Be the Most Practical Tiny Home on the Market first appeared on Yanko Design.

Amazon will invest up to $25 billion in Anthropic in a broad deal

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Amazon and Anthropic are strengthening their ties once again, with steep financial commitments made on both sides. Today, Amazon announced that it will invest $5 billion in the AI company, along with as much as $20 billion in additional payments if certain milestones are met. This news follows the initial $4 billion investment Amazon made in Anthropic in 2023 and a second $4 billion round from 2024.

On Anthropic's side, it has committed to continued use of Amazon's custom Trainium silicon for its AI models. The latest agreement will see Anthropic promising to spend more than $100 billion on AWS technologies over the coming decade. It will secure up to 5 gigawatts of current and future chip capacity for training and powering its models. Their partnership is also bringing Anthropic's Claude platform to Amazon Web Services customers within the AWS portal, removing the need for additional credentials.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/amazon-will-invest-up-to-25-billion-in-anthropic-in-a-broad-deal-225239302.html?src=rss

This Nothing-Inspired XR Headset Displays Your Status So People Know When Not to Interrupt

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Fundamentally, spatial computing has evolved at a considerable pace: both in terms of tech and (some would argue) in design as well. However, in both cases, the basic focus has been on creating the most immersive experience for the user, thinking little about the environment around. There is little focus on considering how the user interacts with the world outside of the VR/AR headset.

That stands to change with the idea of the Nothing XR(01), a spatial computing headset that puts a dot matrix glyph system over one eye to display users’ states like available, engaged, DND, or idle, while it’s worn. The concept is simple: to let people nearby understand your status at a glance. When you’re wearing the headset, others in the real world can quickly tell whether you’re available for discussion or too engaged to be interrupted.

Designers: Rishajit Prakash and Shashwat Pandey

The young designer duo has based the concept on Nothing’s signature design language. It may have its roots in the headsets that’ve been released and not released in the past years, but the idea of the nifty Nothing XR(01), which shifts the discussion toward often ignored real world situation, cannot be overlooked. Its design allows people around to understand the wearer’s intent instantly, without interrupting their experience.

Creatives working in shared environments are often interrupted accidentally by their peers, just because they have no evident clues of when the wearer is available for conversation. By creating a concept for social transparency in an immersive environment, XR(01) has the potential of being the next big idea in extended reality. It is a simple way that allows people around to interact with those engrossed in the digital world.

Designed as a headset concept that communicates without words, the Nothing XR(01) allows the wearer to communicate their social boundary (to the people present outside the immersive space) through four different states DND – do not disturb; Engaged: fully immersed in the task; Available: open to interactions; and Idle: passively present. So instead of isolating you from the world, this concept allows you to be unavailable, while being available; by expressing your state on the front-facing glyph interface.

Now, in shared creative spaces and offices, you can be more engrossed in your immersive world, while those outside read your state from the headset itself. The headset, which has a very Nothing-inspired sensor and camera array over one eye and the glyph matrix on the other. For now, Nothing XR(01) is just a fan-made concept. Whether it will find its way onto the Nothing assembly lines is anybody’s guess. But we think the idea deserves consideration, and presumably Nothing should fast-track it before Meta, Apple, or someone else takes the leap of faith.

The post This Nothing-Inspired XR Headset Displays Your Status So People Know When Not to Interrupt first appeared on Yanko Design.

Google brings Gemini in Chrome to users in Asia and the Pacific

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After debuting in the US, Gemini in Chrome is making its way to more markets. Starting today, Google is rolling out Chrome's built-in chatbot to users in Asia and the Pacific, including Australia, Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea and Vietnam. The expansion comes after Google earlier this year made Gemini in Chrome available to people in Canada, India and New Zealand. 

With the exception of Japan, where Google isn't making the new suite available on iOS just yet, everyone else in the countries mentioned above can access Gemini in Chrome through Chrome's desktop browser, and the app on their iPhone or iPad. To get started, just tap the "Ask Gemini" icon at the top right of the screen. It will open a new sidebar Google introduced at the start of the year where you can chat with Gemini across every open tab. From there, you can also access Google's in-house image generator, Nano Banana 2. As you would expect, the suite offers integrations with Google's other apps, allowing you, for instance, to add events to Calendar without leaving the interface. 

If you don't want to use Gemini, you can right click on the shortcut to unpin it from the top of the interface.    

Update 7:43PM ET: This article has been updated to reflect the expansion includes the entire Asia-Pacific region.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/google-brings-gemini-in-chrome-to-users-in-asia-and-the-pacific-220000698.html?src=rss

John Ternus will be CEO of Apple when Tim Cook steps down this fall

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Apple CEO Tim Cook is officially stepping down from his role on September 1, the company announced today, while current SVP of hardware engineering John Ternus will take over as the new CEO. Cook will transition to a new role as executive chairman of Apple’s Board of Directors. The company says the move was “approved unanimously” by Apple’s Board, and that Cook will work on transitioning his duties over the summer.

“It has been the greatest privilege of my life to be the CEO of Apple and to have been trusted to lead such an extraordinary company,” Cook said in a statement. “I love Apple with all of my being, and I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to work with a team of such ingenious, innovative, creative, and deeply caring people who have been unwavering in their dedication to enriching the lives of our customers and creating the best products and services in the world.”

Cook became CEO of Apple in 2011 following the death of co-founder Steve Jobs, and he led the charge for Apple’s post-iPhone and iPad era by launching the AirPods, Apple Watch and Vision Pro. He also pushed the company into being more of a service provider with the launch of Apple TV and Apple Music. While he’s had a strong reputation as a logistics-oriented executive, Cook has been criticized for lacking the product vision that Jobs was known for.

Ternus, on the other hand, has been focused on product design since joining Apple in 2001. He became VP of hardware engineering in 2013, and later transitioned to a senior executive role in 2021. Ternus was also prominently featured at the MacBook Neo launch a few months ago, where Apple announced a low-cost yet high-quality notebook that encapsulates its unique place in the PC industry.

“I am profoundly grateful for this opportunity to carry Apple’s mission forward,” Ternus said in a statement. “Having spent almost my entire career at Apple, I have been lucky to have worked under Steve Jobs and to have had Tim Cook as my mentor. It has been a privilege to help shape the products and experiences that have changed so much of how we interact with the world and with one another.”

Cook published a community letter timed for the announcement, which we’ve included below:

To the Apple community:

For the past 15 years I’ve started just about every morning the same way. I open my email and I read notes I received the day before from Apple’s users all over the world.

You share little pieces of your lives with me and tell me things you want me to know about how Apple has touched you. About the moment your mom was saved by her Apple Watch. About the perfect selfie you captured at the summit of a mountain that seemed impossible to climb. You thank me for the ways Mac has changed what you can do at work and sometimes give me a hard time because something you care about isn’t working like it should.

In every one of those emails I feel the beating heart of our shared humanity. I feel a sense of deepening obligation to work harder and push further. But most of all, I feel a gratitude that I cannot put into words, that I somehow got to be the person on the other end of those emails, the leader of a company that ignites imaginations and enriches lives in such profound ways it defies description. What an honor and a privilege it has been.

Today we announced that I’m taking the next step in my journey at Apple. Over the coming months I will be transitioning into a new role, leaving the CEO job behind in September and becoming Apple’s executive chairman. A new person will be stepping into what I know in my heart is the best job in the world. That leader is John Ternus, a brilliant engineer and thinker who has spent the past 25 years building the Apple products our users love so much, obsessed with every detail, focused on every possible way we can make something better, bolder, more beautiful, and more meaningful. He is the perfect person for the job.

John cares so much about who we are at Apple, what we do at Apple, who we reach at Apple, and he has the heart and character to lead with extraordinary integrity. I am so proud to call him Apple’s next CEO. This company will reach such incredible heights under his leadership, and you will feel his impact in every bit of delight and discovery that grows out of the products and services to come. I can’t wait for you to get to know him like I do.

This is not goodbye. But at this moment of transition, I wanted to take the opportunity to say thank you. Not on behalf of the company, this time, though there is a wellspring of gratitude for you that overflows inside our walls. But simply on behalf of me. Tim. A person who grew up in a rural place in a different time and, for these magical moments, got to be the CEO of the greatest company in the world. Thank you for the confidence and kindness you’ve shown me. Thank you for saying hi to me on the street and in our stores. Thank you for cheering alongside me when we unveiled a new product or service. Thank you, most of all, for believing in me to lead the company that has always put you at the center of our work. Every day we get up and think about what we can do to make your life a little bit better. And every day, you’ve made mine the best I could have asked for.

Thank you.

Meanwhile, the newly named chief hardware officer, Johny Srouji, reportedly told employees that his division’s staff members will be divided to work on five key areas. According to Bloomberg, staffers working on hardware will be organized into hardware engineering, silicon, advanced technologies, platform architecture and project management teams. Apple reportedly plans to add thousands of employees to work on its iPhones, iPads, Macs, Watches and other products, as well.

Update, April 21, 2026, 8:05AM ET: This story has been updated to add information about the hardware team’s new structure.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/tim-cook-will-step-down-as-204959434.html?src=rss

Mastodon was hit by a ‘major’ DDoS attack that briefly took down parts of the service

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Mastodon seems to be recovering after a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack that took down its primary mastodon.social instance. As TechCrunch notes, the platform began reporting issues early Monday morning as much of the Mastodon-operated server became inaccessible. 

It's not clear who might be behind the attack, but Mastodon's head of communications Andy Piper described it as a "major" incident. A couple hours later, Mastodon shared on a status page that it had implemented countermeasures and that users should be able to access mastodon.social once again. Piper said that "some ongoing instability is a possibility" as the site recovered. It's unclear if any other instances of the service were also targeted; mastodon.social is run directly by the nonprofit and is the largest server on the federated platform. 

Mastodon is the second decentralized platform to be targeted with a DDoS in recent days. Last week, Bluesky also dealt with a significant DDoS incident that took parts of the service offline for several hours. The company posted what it said was its final update Monday morning, saying that its service had "remained stable" and that there was "no evidence of unauthorized access to private user data." A few hours later, however, it seemed Bluesky was once again experiencing some issues, though the cause was unclear. Its official status page was down, and a post from its server status account indicated that there were "elevated errors and timeouts on some Bluesky-hosted services." Bluesky said it was investigating.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/mastodon-was-hit-by-a-major-ddos-attack-that-briefly-took-down-parts-of-the-service-204823221.html?src=rss

A Seoul Design Student Built an AI Speaker Around Namsan Tower

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Namsan Tower stands at the center of Seoul like a declaration. It doesn’t just sit on a hilltop watching over the city; it has always been a transmitter, physically sending signals outward to every corner of a metropolis that never slows down. For most people, it’s a tourist destination, a date-night landmark, the place you go to lock a padlock and feel poetic about love. But for Juhyun Lee, a design student at Hongik University, it was a brief. A very interesting brief.

AION is Lee’s concept for an AI assistant device, and the connection to Namsan Tower isn’t decorative or coincidental. The tower’s original function as a broadcast tower, a structure purpose-built for transmitting information across an entire city, is the actual design philosophy behind it. Lee took that idea and scaled it down: what if a single object on your kitchen counter, or your desk, or your bedside table, could do something similarly intentional? Not just respond to commands, but transmit meaning through light and sound in a way that actually fits how you live? That question is what makes AION more interesting than the average concept speaker.

Designer Name: Juhyun Lee

The device combines speaker and lighting functions, but the point isn’t really the hardware. The point is how it communicates. AION is designed to provide context-aware information, meaning it adapts to what you actually need in the moment rather than just playing music until you ask it something. In a design landscape crowded with smart speakers that are essentially cylinders with microphones, a concept that thinks about situational awareness and ambient communication feels genuinely worth the attention.

Light as a communication tool is an underused idea in home technology, and it puzzles me that more designers haven’t pushed harder here. We’re surrounded by screens that demand our eyes, and speakers that demand our ears. The quiet alternative, light that shifts and signals without interrupting you, is something AION seems to understand. There’s a reason we find a lamp calming and a notification alarming. The difference is mostly about how information reaches us, not what the information actually is.

The name AION is borrowed from Greek, where it carries meanings of “age” and “eternity,” a word associated with cyclical time and continuity rather than a single moment. That choice doesn’t feel arbitrary. A tower that has broadcast through decades of a city’s history, and a home device designed to integrate into the ongoing rhythm of daily life, share a certain kind of permanence in their logic. They aren’t built for a single interaction. They’re built to always be there, doing their job quietly in the background.

What’s refreshing about Lee’s approach is the restraint. Concept design can easily become an exercise in maximalism, stacking features and rendering a product that looks cinematic but has no real relationship to how humans actually use things. AION doesn’t appear to fall into that trap. The Namsan Tower reference isn’t about aesthetics alone; it’s a framework that disciplines the design. You start with a clear function, a clear reason for existing, and you build outward from there.

Hongik University has produced a lot of notable designers over the years, and Lee’s project earns its place in that tradition not because it’s technically revolutionary, but because it’s conceptually coherent. The thinking is visible. You can follow the logic from inspiration to outcome, and that kind of transparency in a design brief is rarer than it should be.

Whether AION ever moves past concept stage is probably the wrong thing to focus on. The more useful takeaway is what it suggests about the future of AI devices in general: that the most compelling ones won’t necessarily be the smartest or the loudest, but the ones that know when to speak in light instead of sound, when to blend into the room, and when to make themselves known. Seoul’s tower has been doing exactly that for decades. Someone just finally took notes.

The post A Seoul Design Student Built an AI Speaker Around Namsan Tower first appeared on Yanko Design.