Zoom’s vision of filling meetings with AI clones has nearly arrived. On Wednesday, the video conferencing app announced that you’ll soon be able to create a “photorealistic” avatar of yourself in case you aren’t “camera-ready.” That means your AI avatar can appear polished if you’ve just crawled out of bed.
https://www.theverge.com/news/779154/zoom-ai-photorealistic-avatars-live-translation
The iOS 26 release may be the most controversial since the drastic changes made to iOS 7 back in 2013. Users didn’t appreciate having to watch short animations before getting into their apps. Many complained about the UI hiding useful buttons, making it harder for power users to find the right tools for the job. Despite the controversy, skeuomorphism—where Apple tried incorporating more familiar images and designs, such as the battery image representing battery life—still remains to this day. That brings us to now and the emphasis on “glassmorphism,” emphasizing opaque windows for a pseudo-3D effect.
https://gizmodo.com/liquid-glass-on-ios-26-is-here-to-stay-whether-you-like-it-or-not-2000658876
Carla Rover once spent 30 minutes sobbing after having to restart a project she vibe coded. She called vibe coding a beautiful, endless cocktail napkin on which one can perpetually sketch ideas. But dealing with AI-generated code that one hopes to use in production can be “worse than babysitting,” she said, as these AI models can mess up work in ways that are hard to predict.
https://techcrunch.com/2025/09/14/vibe-coding-has-turned-senior-devs-into-ai-babysitters-but-they-say-its-worth-it/
Last September, Snap revealed its fifth-generation Spectacles, upgraded AR glasses with a twist: they were only ever released to developers. One year later, we still haven’t seen even a glimpse of the consumer-ready version of those glasses, which the company still says is coming in 2026, but Snap is ready to show off Snap OS 2.0, a software update to those developer Spectacles that signals its plans for mainstream AR.
https://www.theverge.com/gadgets/777810/snap-os-2-spectacles-software-browser-spotlight-gallery
Analyst Kester Mann, from CCS Insight, told BBC News that Apple's announcement "marks the beginning of the end of the physical Sim card".
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gz30grggqo
"We’ve looked at how our teams work best, and the data is clear: when people work together in person more often, they thrive — they are more energized, empowered, and they deliver stronger results," Amy Coleman, the company's executive VP and chief people officer, said in a memo sent to employees Tuesday. "As we build the AI products that will define this era, we need the kind of energy and momentum that comes from smart people working side by side, solving challenging problems together."
https://qz.com/microsoft-rto-return-to-work-ending-remote-work
The presentation was a far cry from Apple’s heavy-handed mentions of AI at the iPhone 16 unveiling, which led to public disappointment when some flagship features didn’t roll out as promised. This year, Apple talked more about how AI is helping power features in the background, and less about how it’s putting AI in front of consumers’ faces — unlike Google’s Pixel 10 unveiling last month and Samsung’s event in January.
https://www.theverge.com/apple-event/774963/apple-september-launch-event-ai-apple-intelligence