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Apple iOS 16

Source: Apple

Apple’s newest update to its iPhone operating system, iOS 16.1, will be available on Monday, the company announced in a press release Thursday.

It will launch for iPhone users with an iPhone 8 or newer models, and it adds quite a few features that weren’t available when iOS 16 launched back in September.

Here’s what’s coming.

Access Apple Fitness+ without Apple Watch

Apple Watch Fitness

Source: Apple Inc.

IPhone users with iOS 16.1 will be able to subscribe to and access Apple Fitness+ even if they don’t have an Apple Watch.

Fitness+ is a subscription service with guided workouts and meditations that costs $9.99 per month or $79.99 per year. Apple is offering three months of Fitness+ free with the purchase of a new iPhone, iPad or Apple TV.

If you work out on Fitness+ without an Apple Watch, you won’t be able to see metrics like calories burned, or your real-time heart rate.

Clean energy iPhone charging

Clean Energy Charging will be available with iOS 16.1

Sofia Pitt

The iOS 16.1 update will also include Clean Energy Charging. Apple says this will let users optimize charging for when cleaner energy sources are available, helping to decrease your iPhone’s carbon footprint.

Clean Energy Charging is an option you can select in Settings > Battery > Battery Health & Charging. Under the Clean Energy Charging option, Apple says, “In your region, iPhone will try to reduce your carbon footprint by selectively charging when lower carbon emission electricity is available. iPhone learns from your daily charging routine so it can reach full charge before you need to use it.”

iCloud shared photo library

Apple Shared Photo Library

Apple

IOS 16.1 will let you create an iCloud Shared Photo Library instead of a standard shared iCloud album.

This will allow you to invite up to five other people, or six in total, to a library where you can all add, delete, edit or favorite photos and videos.

The Camera app will offer a new toggle that allows users to choose to send photos to the shared library automatically. So, if you’re on vacation and taking a bunch of pictures at the beach with a group of friends, everyone can snap pictures with this option turned on and see all of the photos in the shared album.

Live Activities for third-party apps

Once you update to iOS 16.1 your lock screen will feature Live Activities, which shows information from sports games, ride-sharing apps like Uber, or updates on a food delivery order. So, you might see how long it’ll take for dinner to arrive at your house, with information on how soon it’ll arrive. Or, as the screenshot below shows, the score, inning and count of a baseball game with updates on plays. It’ll be most useful on the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max, which have always-on displays so you can glance to see new information. You’ll start to see some apps on Monday but it requires developer adoption, so additional apps will come later.

Here’s what it looks like:

Live Activities on iOS 16.1.

Apple

Support for Matter accessories in the Home App

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Figma’s stock sinks more than 20% after last week’s IPO pop

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Figma's stock sinks more than 20% after last week's IPO pop

Dylan Field, co-founder and CEO of Figma, appears on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on July 31, 2025.

Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Figma shares dropped 23% on Monday, cutting into the gains the design software company posted after hitting the market last week.

The stock dropped $27.50 to $94.50 as of midday. That’s down from a close of $122 on Friday.

Figma and top stockholders sold about 37 million shares at $33 per share late Wednesday, yielding around $412 million in proceeds flowing to the company. On Thursday, its first day of trading on the New York Stock Exchange, the stock more than tripled.

The initial reception shows a renewed appetite on Wall Street for high-growth technology companies after a historically slow stretch for initial public offerings.

Figma said in an updated IPO prospectus that it expects second-quarter revenue to increase about 40% from a year earlier. But unlike many technology companies that have gone public over the past several years, Figma has regularly posted profits.

Figma’s fully diluted valuation sits at approximately $56 billion, almost triple the amount Adobe agreed to pay in its 2022 acquisition offer. Regulators in the European Union and the U.K. opposed the deal, which the two companies called off in late 2023.

Dylan Field, Figma’s 33-year-old CEO, owns stock in the company worth more than $5 billion even after Monday’s slide.

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Amazon lays off over 100 employees in Wondery unit as part of audio business restructuring

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Amazon lays off over 100 employees in Wondery unit as part of audio business restructuring

The logo for Wondery is displayed on a smartphone in an arranged photograph taken in the Brooklyn borough of New York, U.S., on Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2020.

Gabby Jones | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Amazon is laying off roughly 110 employees in its Wondery podcast division and the head of the group is leaving as part of a broader reshuffling of the company’s audio unit.

In a Monday note to staffers, Steve Boom, Amazon’s vice president of audio, Twitch and games, said the company is consolidating some Wondery units under its Audible audiobook and podcasting division. Wondery CEO Jen Sargent is also stepping down from her role, Boom said.

“These changes will not only better align our teams as they work to take advantage of the strategic opportunities ahead but, even more crucially, will ensure we have the right structure in place to deliver the very best experience to creators, customers and advertisers,” Boom wrote in the memo, which was viewed by CNBC. “Unfortunately, these changes also include some role reductions, and we have notified those employees this morning.”

Bloomberg was first to report on the job cuts.

The move comes nearly five years after Amazon acquired Wondery as part of a push to expand its catalog of original audio content. The podcasting company made a name for itself with hit shows like “Dirty John” and “Dr. Death.”

More recently, Wondery signed several lucrative licensing deals with Jason and Travis Kelce’s “New Heights” podcast, along with Dax Shepard’s “Armchair Expert.”

Amazon is streamlining “how Wondery further integrates” into the company by separating the teams that oversee its narrative podcasts from those developing “creator-led shows,” Boom wrote.

The narrative podcasting unit will consolidate under Audible, and creator-led content will move to a new unit within Boom’s organization in Amazon called “creator services,” he wrote.

Amazon’s audio pursuits face a heightened challenge from the growing popularity of video podcasts on Alphabet‘s YouTube, which now hosts an increasing number of shows.

Video shows require different discovery, growth and monetization strategies than “audio-first, narrative series,” Boom wrote in the memo to Amazon staffers.

“The podcast landscape has evolved significantly over the past few years,” Boom said.

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Baidu plans to expand its robotaxis to Europe with Lyft deal

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Baidu plans to expand its robotaxis to Europe with Lyft deal

Cheng Xin | Getty Images

Baidu will bring its driverless taxis to Europe next year via a partnership with U.S. ridehailing firm Lyft, as the Chinese tech giant looks to expand its autonomous vehicles globally.

The robotaxis will initially be deployed in the U.K. and Germany from 2026 with the aim to have “thousands” of vehicles across Europe in the “following years,” the two companies said.

Lyft has had very little presence in Europe until last week when it closed the acquisition of Germany-based ride hailing company FreeNow, which is available in over 150 cities across nine countries, including Ireland, the U.K., Germany and France.

Deployment of the autonomous cars is “pending regulatory approval,” Lyft and Baidu said in a Monday statement. It’s unclear if Lyft will offer Baidu’s robotaxis via the FreeNow app or another product.

The partnership marks a continued push from Baidu to expand its robotaxis to international markets.

Last month, Baidu partnered with Uber to deploy its autonomous cars on the ride-hailing giant’s platform outside the U.S. and mainland China, with a focus on the Middle East and Asia, which will launch later this year. The partnership also covers Europe, though a launch date for the region has not yet been disclosed.

In China, Baidu has been operating its own robotaxi service since 2021 in major cities like Beijing, allowing users to hail an Apollo Go car through the app. Meanwhile, for Lyft, the deal could boost the firm’s presence in the region as it looks to take on rivals like Uber and Bolt.

Autonomous vehicles have become a big focus for ride-hailing companies which have looked to partner with companies that are developing the technology for driverless cars.

In the U.K., a market that Lyft is targeting, Uber this year partnered with self-driving car technology firm Wayve to launch trials of fully autonomous rides starting in spring 2026.

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