Apple News
Apple’s iPhone Pocket now sold out worldwide
Apple has collaborated with renowned Japanese fashion house ISSEY MIYAKE to launch the iPhone Pocket—a limited-edition knitted carrier designed specifically for the iPhone. The accessory is now completely sold out worldwide in every market where it was released.
It was available in two lengths and multiple colors:
• Short version: Lemon, Mandarin, Purple, Pink, Peacock, Sapphire, Cinnamon, Black
• Long version: Sapphire, Cinnamon, Black
In the United States, prices were $149.95 for the short version and $229.95 for the long version.
Joe Rossignol for MacRumors:
iPhone Pocket became available to order on Apple’s online store starting Friday, November 14, in the United States, France, China, Italy, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, and the United Kingdom. It quickly sold out in the United States, but some colors and size options were still available in South Korea and a few other countries until the past few days.
Given it is a limited-edition accessory, it is unclear if there will ever be additional inventory of the iPhone Pocket now that it is fully sold out worldwide.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple and Issey had better get knitting!
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Apple poised to reclaim its rightful crown as world’s top smartphone maker
According to Counterpoint Research, Apple is poised to reclaim its position as the world’s top smartphone manufacturer for the first time in over 10 years, topping a raft of iPhone knockoff peddlers. Apple’s iPhone sales boom is fueled by the strong launch of its latest iPhone lineup and a surge in consumer device upgrades.
Vlad Savov for Bloomberg News:
The iPhone 17 models introduced in September have been a hit both domestically in the US and in Apple’s other critical market, China. They’ve enticed more people to upgrade, leading to double-digit year-over-year sales growth in both markets, according to the researchers. The US company also is benefiting from a cooling of US-China trade tensions and a depreciating dollar that has boosted purchases in emerging markets, they added.
The growth will propel Apple past longtime rival Samsung Electronics Co. this year, according to Counterpoint’s figures. Shipments of the iPhone are set to grow at 10% in 2025, compared with 4.6% for Samsung.
The overall smartphone market is expected to expand by 3.3% in 2025, with Apple projected to claim a share of 19.4%. It will be the first time since 2011 that the company takes the No. 1 position.
Looking further into the future, [Counterpoint analyst Yang] Wang sees Apple extending its lead. The upcoming 2026 debut of a foldable iPhone and a budget-friendly iPhone 17e will both help sales. And Apple is expected to follow those models with a major iPhone design revamp in 2027, as Bloomberg News has previously reported.
MacDailyNews Take: If it’s not an iPhone, it’s a pretend iPhone.
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Apple TV forced to scrap ‘The Hunt’ (‘Traqués’) series after creator’s plagiarism scandal
In a setback for Apple TV’s budding French-language content slate, the streaming giant has been compelled to abandon its highly anticipated crime thriller series “The Hunt” (“Traqués”), following explosive allegations of plagiarism against its creator. The scandal, which has rocked the European entertainment industry, centers on claims that the show’s script and storyline were lifted almost verbatim from an existing French graphic novel and TV project. This development not only highlights the perils of intellectual property theft in the streaming era but also raises questions about Apple’s vetting processes for international productions.
The controversy erupted earlier this month when French author and comic book creator Julien Blondel, known for his work on the acclaimed graphic novel series W_E_ (a gritty tale of surveillance and pursuit in a dystopian France), publicly accused Traqués‘ creator, a relatively unknown screenwriter named Lucas Moreau, of wholesale plagiarism. According to Blondel’s detailed exposé shared on social media and corroborated by industry insiders, Moreau had pitched Traqués to Apple Studios Paris as an original concept. However, side-by-side comparisons revealed striking similarities: identical plot twists involving a rogue intelligence operative evading a shadowy government agency, recurring motifs of urban cat-and-mouse chases through Paris’s underbelly, and even verbatim dialogue lifted from W_E_‘s third volume, published in 2022.
Blondel wasn’t alone in his outrage. The allegations quickly snowballed when it emerged that Moreau had also drawn inspiration—without attribution — from the 2021 French miniseries Les Invisibles, a Canal+ production about undercover agents in a surveillance state. A forensic analysis by the Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques (SACD), France’s leading authors’ rights organization, confirmed that over 40% of Traqués’ pilot script overlapped with protected material from these sources. “This isn’t homage; it’s highway robbery,” Blondel told Le Monde in an interview. “Apple was about to greenlight a show that could have fooled audiences into thinking it was fresh, but it’s a Frankenstein of stolen ideas.”
Apple TV acted swiftly upon receiving the formal complaint from Blondel’s legal team on November 10, 2025. In a terse statement released via its European press office, the company confirmed the project’s indefinite suspension: “We take all claims of intellectual property infringement seriously. After a thorough internal review, we’ve decided not to proceed with Traqués in its current form to uphold our commitment to original storytelling and creator rights.” Sources close to the production reveal that the decision came directly from Apple’s content acquisition head, who reportedly viewed the evidence as “irrefutable.” The series, which had already cast rising stars like Adèle Exarchopoulos in the lead role of a fugitive hacker, had been slated for a 2026 premiere with a budget exceeding €15 million ($16.5 million USD).
This isn’t the first time plagiarism has derailed a high-profile streaming project. Just last year, Netflix faced backlash over similarities between its Spanish thriller Intimidad and an earlier Catalan novel, leading to script rewrites and delays. But Apple’s misstep with Traqués stings particularly in France, where the company has aggressively expanded its local output to compete with established players like Canal+ and Arte. Since launching Apple TV in 2019, the service has invested heavily in Gallic talent, producing hits like the Oscar-nominated The Tragedy of Macbeth (with French co-production elements) and the sci-fi drama Extrapolations. Traqués was positioned as a flagship for Apple’s “European Originals” initiative, aimed at capturing the continent’s 450 million potential subscribers.
The fallout extends beyond the canceled series. Moreau, who had been hailed as a “rising voice” in French TV circles after winning a minor César for screenwriting in 2024, now faces potential lawsuits from both Blondel and the Les Invisibles production team. Industry observers speculate that his career could be in tatters, with agents distancing themselves amid whispers of blacklisting. “In an age where AI tools make copying easier than ever, this is a wake-up call for streamers,” says media analyst Marie Dupont of the Paris-based consultancy ScreenTrends. “Apple’s quick pivot is commendable, but it exposes gaps in their due diligence—especially for non-English content where translation barriers can hide red flags.”
For Apple TV, the silver lining might be the opportunity to pivot to other promising French projects in development, such as a historical drama about the French Resistance co-created with Pathé. Yet the Traqués debacle serves as a stark reminder of the cutthroat world of global content creation: in the rush to localize and innovate, authenticity remains the ultimate currency. As Blondel put it, “Stories are sacred. Steal one, and you’re hunted for life.”
MacDailyNews Note: This article draws from Clément Garin’s in-depth reporting on Substack, where he unpacks the intricacies of the scandal for paid subscribers. For the original French analysis, visit ClemGarin.substack.com.
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Apple TV to release ‘Pluribus’ S1E5 early this week
Apple has announced that the fifth episode of “Pluribus” will premiere ahead of schedule this week, landing on Wednesday instead of the originally planned Friday — well in advance of Thanksgiving and Black Friday.
As is standard with Apple TV releases, the episode is likely to drop at 9 p.m. ET on the night before the stated release date, so, in this case, Tuesday night.
Similarly, Apple TV is fast-tracking the ninth episode of “The Last Frontier,” bringing it out two days early this week.
— Apple TV (@AppleTV) November 24, 2025
MacDailyNews Take: But, now we’ll have to wait longer for the next episode!
Apple TV is available on the Apple TV app in over 100 countries and regions, on over 1 billion screens, including iPhone, iPad, Apple TV 4K, Apple Vision Pro, Mac, popular smart TVs from Samsung, LG, Sony, VIZIO, TCL and others, Roku and Amazon Fire TV devices, Chromecast with Google TV, PlayStation and Xbox gaming consoles, and at tv.apple.com, for $12.99 per month with a seven-day free trial for new subscribers. For a limited time, customers who purchase and activate a new iPhone, iPad, Apple TV or Mac can enjoy three months of Apple TV for free.
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Apple focusing on ‘quality, underlying performance,’ and AI for iOS 27, macOS 27 next year
Following the major visual redesign in iOS 26 and the rollout of Liquid Glass across Apple’s ecosystem, the company is preparing a refinement-focused update reminiscent of Mac OS X Snow Leopard. For iOS 27 and 2026’s other flagship OS releases — including macOS 27 — Apple is prioritizing “quality and underlying performance.”
Mark Gurman for Bloomberg News:
Aiming to improve the software, engineering teams are now combing through Apple’s operating systems, hunting for bloat to cut, bugs to eliminate, and any opportunity to meaningfully boost performance and overall quality. Like Snow Leopard set the groundwork for future overhauls and new types of Macs, iOS 27 will lay the foundation for foldable iPhones and other new hardware.
On the AI side, more dramatic changes are brewing, including the long-awaited upgrade of the Siri voice assistant in iOS 26.4 and the weaving of artificial intelligence into additional apps in iOS 27. That includes a health-focused AI agent (tied to a Health+ subscription) next fall and an expansion of the AI-powered web search meant to rival both ChatGPT and Perplexity.
The AI upgrades are a gigantic priority, with engineering teams throughout the company developing them. Inside Craig Federighi’s software engineering group, Sebastien Marineau, the vice president of intelligent system experience, is working on the user-facing Apple Intelligence enhancements, and we already know that Vision Pro creator Mike Rockwell is leading the Siri side of things.
The company also has teamed up with Alphabet Inc.’s Google to bring Gemini technology into its Apple Foundation Models.
MacDailyNews Take: Give us a choice of third-party AI, Apple. We’d like to be able to choose the best AI, not the third-best or worse.
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Apple is losing many hardware engineers to OpenAI’s Jony Ive AI device efforts
OpenAI is aggressively recruiting talent from Apple’s hardware engineering team. While Jony Ive’s design firm LoveFrom has long been staffed primarily by ex-Apple designers — effectively turning Apple’s once-legendary design group into a talent pipeline — the departures have now spread to hardware engineering.
The recent $6 billion acquisition by OpenAI of Jony Ive’s secretive AI device startup, io, has accelerated the exodus. Multiple engineers from Apple’s hardware division have reportedly jumped ship to join the effort.
As Ive and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman revealed earlier this year, the company is developing a new line of AI-powered hardware devices, with launches potentially slated for as early as next year.
Mark Gurman for Bloomberg News:
It’s already public that former Apple industrial design head Evans Hankey and former hardware engineering executive Tang Tan are part of the initiative. But the exodus doesn’t stop there: Apple is also losing many rank-and-file hardware engineers to OpenAI’s device efforts.
I’m told that in just the past month, OpenAI has hired more than 40 people for its devices group — with many of those engineers coming directly from the iPhone maker. Apple’s hardware engineering team, run by John Ternus, has been pursuing its own AI-driven hardware revival. That includes a slate of smart home devices, renewed robotics ambitions, the possibility of AI-enhanced AirPods equipped with cameras, and, of course, smart glasses.
From what I’ve heard, Apple is none too pleased about OpenAI’s poaching, and some consider it a problem. The hires include key directors (a fairly senior designation), as well as managers and engineers. And they hail from a wide range of areas: camera engineering, iPhone hardware, Mac hardware, silicon, device testing and reliability, industrial design, manufacturing, audio, smartwatches, Vision Pro development, software, and human factors. In other words, OpenAI is picking up people from nearly every relevant Apple department. It’s remarkable.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple’s current weak, myopic, and dithering leadership leads directly to this tidal wave of defections. If you’re interested in AI, would you rather work for Sam Altman or Tim Cook? If you’re interested in hardware design, would you rather work for Jony Ive or some random formerly low-level Apple designer who’s two weeks into the job until he leaves for OpenAI, too? A fish rots from the head down.
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CNN drops out of Apple News, for now
CNN has pulled its articles from Apple News, terminating its content-sharing partnership with the platform, according to a Sunday report from Semafor.
The companies are currently in talks over a new agreement that would bring CNN content back to Apple News, the report added.
CNN quietly removed its stories from Apple News over the weekend, ending the cable news brand’s contract to share its content on the popular news app, Semafor has learned. The two companies are continuing to discuss a new deal that would restore CNN’s stories to Apple News.
As social media platforms have leaned away from filling users’ feeds with links to written content, Apple News and its paid counterpart, Apple News+, have become increasingly important distribution and monetization levers for news publishers. Apple News drives millions of views and impressions a month to many news organizations, while participation in Apple News+, which offers users content from hundreds of paywalled publications for about $10 a month, has yielded millions in annual revenue for publishers.
For CNN, the hardball tactics with Apple reflect the company’s increasing push for digital monetization, and more aggressive posture towards sharing its content with tech platforms. CNN rolled out a new paid subscription offering earlier this month, and has been putting more of its reported stories behind a paywall.
MacDailyNews Take: No big loss for Apple News.
Let’s check out CNN’s “leverage” in these negotiations with Apple::
U.S. Cable News, Nielsen, week of November 10, 2025:
Prime Time Average Total Viewers
• Fox News: 2,223,000
• MSNBC: 966,000
• CNN: 572,000
Total Day Average Total Viewers
• Fox News: 1,460,000
• MSNBC: 624,000
• CNN: 444,000
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