Connect with us

Published

on

Apple CEO Tim Cook (L) looks at brand new Apple products during an Apple event on September 12, 2023 in Cupertino, California. 

Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

Apple released iOS 17 for iPhones on Monday. It’s Apple’s biggest software update of the year, and is available for anyone with an iPhone from 2018 or later.

Apple releases a big update to the iPhone’s operating system every year alongside new iPhones, and you don’t necessarily need to buy a new device to get access to the latest software.

This year’s update has a lot of improvements to some of the most-used apps, including the Phone app, Messages, and Safari.

There are a lot of changes, but here are some of the highlights you need to know about:

Apple’s Contact Posters in iOS 17 will change the way your phone looks when you recieve a call.

Apple

  • Contact posters. One of the biggest changes will be a new feature that allows iPhone users to choose a picture and font to change how they appear when they call other people’s iPhones. With iOS 17, users can create your own “contact poster” in a very similar way to how users can customize their lockscreen.
  • Better autocorrect. Apple’s autocorrect has been improved with a transformer-based language model, a relative of the technology that is used in ChatGPT. Users can also automatically finish their sentences using autocorrect by tapping the space bar if there’s a suggestion.

Apple SOS Assistance.

Source: Apple Inc.

  • Roadside assistance. The feature will let users with recent phones call AAA in the U.S. through satellites, if there’s no cell service. It requires a phone with Apple’s satellite service called SOS, so will only work on last year’s iPhone 14 or this year’s iPhone 15.
  • New iMessage interface. Apple’s text messaging interface has gotten a remodel, moving hidden apps such as stickers or the camera to a menu on the left-hand side of the screen, as opposed to above the keyboard. The Messages app can now also automatically transcribe short audio messages. Searching your old texts is also significantly improved.

Kif Leswing/CNBC

  • Stickers. While the iPhone has had stickers — little images you can place on top of chats — for a few years now, in iOS 17, Apple has put all of the sticker features in a new piece of software that can be accessed through the new iMessage interface. The new “experience,” as Apple calls it, can use machine learning to automatically cut subjects — like your cat’s face — out of photos to make new stickers from them.
  • Automatic “got home safe” notifications. A feature called Check In can send automatic notifications to friends and family based on if you got home safely or if you’ve tapped a button after a period of time.

StandBy Mode in iOS 17

Todd Haselton | CNBC

  • Standby dock mode. iPhones charging horizontally on a magnetic MagSafe dock now turn into a sort of dashboard that can display the time, your photos, upcoming appointments, information in Widgets, or even a “Live Activity” such as a tracker for your Uber Eats delivery.
  • Offline maps. Users can now save parts of Apple Maps for offline in case they don’t have internet access, like when driving to a remote location. It’s also handy to save your metropolitan area in your phone for faster and more reliable routing.
  • Drop the “hey.” Just “Siri.” It’s cleaner. Apple’s voice assistant no longer requires a “hey” in front of “Siri.”

Apple Voicemail transcription.

Source: Apple

  • Live voicemails. Now, when users receive a call, they can send it directly to voicemail with a button on the iPhone’s lock screen. If the caller leaves a voicemail, it will be transcribed in real time, allowing the user to decide if it’s something they might want to pick up, after all.
  • Better two-factor authentication. Users who use both Apple’s Mail app and the Safari browser will find an extremely handy feature: When a log-in code is sent to your email, it will automatically show up above the keyboard. Also, codes sent via text message are now automatically deleted after you’ve input them, saving you from seeing a bunch of unread-message notifications that are actually just log-in codes.
  • Password-protected private browsing. Apple’s on-phone private browsing mode, which doesn’t save web history, now can be password-protected and unlocked with Apple’s Face ID.
  • A new business card. Trading information with other iPhone users is now as simple as bumping two iPhones together. Apple’s AirDrop feature will trade specific phone numbers, contact posters, or email addresses with the user’s permission.

How to install iOS 17 on your iPhone

Continue Reading

Technology

Oracle stock jumps after $30 billion annual cloud deal revealed in filing

Published

on

By

Oracle stock jumps after  billion annual cloud deal revealed in filing

Oracle CEO Safra Catz speaks at the FII PRIORITY Summit in Miami Beach, Florida, on Feb. 20, 2025.

Joe Raedle | Getty Images

Oracle shares jumped more than 5% after a recent filing showed a cloud deal that would add over $30 billion annually.

CEO Safra Catz is slated to share the deal news at a company meeting Monday, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The revenues are expected to start hitting in the 2028 fiscal year.

“Oracle is off to a strong start in FY26,” Catz is expected to say, according to the filing. “Our MultiCloud database revenue continues to grow at over 100%, and we signed multiple large cloud services agreements including one that is expected to contribute more than $30 billion in annual revenue starting in FY28.”

The deals revealed Monday by Catz will not affect the company’s 2026 guidance, according to the filing.

Read more CNBC tech news

Oracle shares hit record high

Continue Reading

Technology

Trump says he has group of ‘very wealthy people’ ready to buy TikTok

Published

on

By

Trump says he has group of ‘very wealthy people’ ready to buy TikTok

U.S. President Donald Trump announced on April 4 that he would again postpone enforcement of a law banning TikTok unless its Chinese owner ByteDance divests from the platform.

Vcg | Visual China Group | Getty Images

U.S. President Donald Trump told Fox News in an interview aired on Sunday that he has a group of “very wealthy people” ready to buy TikTok, whose identities he can reveal in about two weeks.

Trump added that the deal will probably need Beijing’s approval to move forward, but said “I think President Xi will probably do it,” in reference to China’s leader Xi Jinping.

The president made the off-the-cuff remarks while discussing the possibility of another pause of his “reciprocal” tariffs on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo.” 

Tiktok’s fate in the U.S. has been in doubt since the approval of a law in 2024 that sought to ban the platform unless its Chinese owner, ByteDance, divested from it. The legislation was driven by concerns that the Chinese government could manipulate content and access sensitive data from American users.

Earlier this month, Trump extended the deadline for ByteDance to divest from the platform’s U.S. business. It was his third extension since the Supreme Court upheld the TikTok law just a few days before Trump’s second presidential inauguration in January. The new deadline is Sept. 17. 

The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, of PAFACA, had originally been set to take effect on Jan. 19, after which app store operators and internet service providers would be penalized for supporting TikTok.

TikTok went dark in the U.S. ahead of the original deadline, but was restored after Trump provided it with assurances on the extension.

Trump, who credited the app with boosting his support among young voters in the last presidential election, has maintained that he would like to see the platform stay afloat under new ownership. 

Potential buyers that have voiced interest in the app include Trump insiders such as Oracle’s Larry Ellison to firms like AppLovin and Perplexity AI

Most of the potential bidders for TikTok don't fit both Washington and Beijing's requirements

However, it’s unclear if ByteDance would be willing to sell the company. Any potential divestiture is likely to require approval from the Chinese government.

A deal that would have spun off TikTok’s U.S. operations and allowed ByteDance to retain a minority position had been in the works in April, but was derailed by the announcement of Donald Trump’s tariffs on China, Reuters reported that month.

The president previously floated a proposal for American stakeholders to buy the company and then sell a 50% stake to the U.S. government as part of a joint venture

Experts have previously told CNBC that any potential deal could face legal challenges in the U.S., depending on whether it complies with PAFACA.

Continue Reading

Technology

Nvidia insiders dump more than $1 billion in stock, according to report

Published

on

By

Nvidia insiders dump more than  billion in stock, according to report

NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang speaks during the NVIDIA GTC Paris keynote, part of the 9th edition of the VivaTech technology startup and innovation fair, held at the Dôme de Paris in the Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris on June 11, 2025.

Mustafa Yalcin | Anadolu | Getty Images

Insiders at artificial intelligence chipmaker Nvidia have dumped more than $1 billion in stock over the last year, according to a report from the Financial Times.

About $500 million worth of sales occurred over the last month as the market notched new highs and shook off geopolitical tensions that had rattled investors, according to the report. The stock is up more than 17% this year despite concerns over curbs limiting AI chip sales overseas and 44% over the last three months.

Securities filings revealed that the tech titan recently unloaded about $15 million worth of shares as part of his more than $900 million plan announced in March to sell up to 6 million shares through the end of the year. Huang’s net worth totals about $138 billion, placing him as 11th on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Last week, the chipmaking giant hit a fresh record and rallied for five straight days following the stock sales and an annual shareholder meeting, where the CEO called robotics the biggest opportunity for the company after AI. That helped the chipmaker regain its seat as the most valuable company ahead Microsoft and Apple.

The FT article cited a report from VerityData, which noted that the jump in shares above $150 prompted the stock dump.

Last year, Huang unloaded more than $700 million in Nvidia shares as part of a prearranged plan.

A Nvidia spokesperson declined to comment on the report.

Read the complete Financial Times report here.

Continue Reading

Trending