That isn’t Apple’s former CEO promoting the Galaxy Z Fold 8 in a new Samsung ad — “Tim Cook from Palmerston North” just happens to have the same name and look a lot like him. Released right as Apple announced its iPhone Duo, the ad mimics Apple’s cinematic product launch videos, with “Tim Cook” saying “the future is here.” Samsung also takes a jab at Apple’s Tim Cook with a reference to his recently updated profile picture. 

It’s the latest in Samsung’s long-running history of ads dunking on its biggest rival, like one ad from over a decade ago that makes fun of iPhone fans willing to wait in lengthy lines for Apple’s latest phone. Then there’s the ad for the Galaxy Note 8 that features a viral shot of a diehard Apple fan with a haircut matching the iPhone’s notch. Samsung did a whole series of “Ingenius” ads teasing Apple’s Genius Bar tech support, with customers asking an Apple Store employee if iPhones have various Samsung features, like a headphone jack or an included fast charger. 

Not all of the ads take a comedic tone, though. A 2024 Samsung ad responded to controversy around Apple’s “Crush” iPad ad with a scene of a woman playing a damaged guitar on a re-creation of Apple’s set, featuring the tagline “Creativity cannot be crushed.” 

Samsung and Apple’s rivalry has even inspired spinoff ads from other companies — Microsoft once released an ad suggesting the two camps “kind of like fighting.”

Jimmy Kimmel will be interviewing Democratic Texas Senate candidate James Talarico “under unusual circumstances,” posting the interview directly to YouTube, rather than airing it on TV during Jimmy Kimmel Live.  In Wednesday night’s episode, Kimmel said this was out of concern for retaliation from the Trump administration’s FCC: 

[Trump’s] FCC has threatened me, threatened our show, threatened our network, ABC, our affiliates, our local stations based on simple, traditional editorial decisions, guest bookings, it would seem they don’t like. And so, out of consideration for our local stations, especially our ABC affiliates in Texas who would have to deal with this nonsense, my interview tomorrow with James Talarico will not air on television. It will be posted on YouTube instead. It will not be on TV.

Kimmel’s announcement comes almost a year after his show was taken off the air in response to threats from FCC chair Brendan Carr. In February, Stephen Colbert also had to move an interview with Talarico to YouTube, claiming CBS barred him from airing it over worries about upsetting the FCC, citing the FCC’s equal time rule. The FCC also took aim at The View after an interview with Talarico earlier this year.

ABC, which airs Jimmy Kimmel Live and The View, filed a lawsuit against the FCC last month claiming it has “waged a retaliatory campaign” against its networks, “punishing” ABC by threatening to pull its broadcast licenses.

At Wednesday’s iPhone Duo launch event, Apple announced a handful of new Siri AI Audio Intelligence features, including Siri Recap, Live Rewind, Sound Recognition, and Music Recognition. Alongside its announcement, Apple released a document laying out how it plans to balance AI “ambient listening” and users’ privacy. It says the raw audio from the new features “is handled within dedicated hardware, is not saved as a file, and is not accessible to the operating system, apps, or Apple.”

Apple explains that Audio Intelligence relies on the Secure Exclave in the S11 chip that powers the new Apple Watch Series 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4: 

The S11 chip in Apple Watch Series 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4 includes a Secure Exclave: a hardware-isolated compartment built into the silicon to process sensor data separately from the rest of the system. Data that is processed and analyzed in the Secure Exclave cannot be accessed by watchOS, apps, the user, or Apple. Audio from the microphone enters the Secure Exclave of Apple Watch, where it is initially processed for speech, sounds, or music, without transcribing or storing the raw audio. This buffer is a continuously overwritten stream that exists only within the protected hardware and never creates an audio recording.

Apple also says users control “whether and when” Audio Intelligence features are active — Live Rewind requires users to double-tap the Digital Crown every time they want to activate it. Additionally, if Audio Intelligence needs to be transferred to your iPhone, it’s transferred with encryption through both devices’ Secure Exclaves. Users also choose what text to keep from Siri Recap and Live Rewind, and text from Audio Intelligence will sync with end-to-end encryption if you have a device passcode and use iCloud’s two-factor authentication.

Apple announced the Apple Watch Series 12 at its September 9th launch event, with Siri AI-powered Audio Intelligence as the highlight feature. The new abilities include a Live Rewind feature that allows users to view a transcript of the last 15 seconds of recently detected audio and view a text transcript of it on their watch by double-pressing its Digital Crown button. There’s also a Siri Recap feature that uses “ambient listening” to take notes on audio from your watch, with summaries in the Siri app.

Apple’s list of Audio Intelligence features:

• Sound Recognition, which comes to Apple Watch to alert users who are deaf or hard of hearing of important sounds, even when their iPhone isn’t with them. This feature listens for sounds like sirens, alarms, doorbells, or a baby crying, and uses on-device intelligence to notify users when they’re detected.
• Live Rewind, which can help users recall what was just said in conversation. A double-press of the Digital Crown shows the previous 15 seconds of a conversation as a text snippet, so the user can catch something they may have missed or are less familiar with. Users can ask Siri about the content of the text or save it to the Siri app to revisit later.
• Siri Recap, which can create high-level summaries of conversations that users can review later to jog their memory. When Siri Recap is turned on, after a conversation, Apple Intelligence automatically generates a title and key points in the new Siri app, allowing users to be more present and engaged in the moment.
• Shazam, which instantly detects the music playing around the user and automatically displays the song title and artist’s name on the Music Recognition widget in the Smart Stack, easily glanceable on the wrist.

The Live Rewind and Siri Recap features will be available in beta later this year on both the Watch Series 12 and Watch Ultra 4, in English at first. This support page describes how they’re activated and Apple’s approach to privacy.

The new watch is powered by a new S11 chip and comes in space gray, black, light gold, and dark bronze aluminum, as well as radiant gold and natural titanium and night blue and pearl white ceramic. Apple says that battery life during outdoor workouts has increased by 25 percent to 10 hours, while faster charging can now add up to 12 hours of battery life in 15 minutes.

The Watch Series 12 starts at $399 for the aluminum version, $699 for titanium, and $899 for ceramic, and launches September 18th, with preorders starting today. It will also be available through the Apple Upgrade leasing program with 12- and 24-month leases starting at $11.99 per month.

While the Series 12 didn’t get any major design changes, the aluminum version now has Ceramic Shield 2, which Apple says is “tougher than any smartwatch glass and 60 percent tougher than the Ion-X of previous aluminum models.”

The Series 12 also features new optical and electrical heart sensors that now support continuous background heart rate sensing with readings taken every five seconds, 60 times more than before, and now includes support for perimenopause and menopause in the Cycle Tracking feature. The Health app has been redesigned with new tabs for Insights and Longevity that track information like Health Age, a feature that lays out your metrics compared to your chronological age. 

Apple also says that with the iPhone Camera and your Apple Watch, it can take “in-depth physical assessments” of your flexibility, strength, and balance, while analyzing the videos privately using on-device AI. A VO2 max assessment is also available if you have an Apple Watch and the AirPods Pro 3 or third-party heart rate sensing hardware.

Last year’s Series 11, which also launched at $399 with 42mm and 46mm sizes, added 5G, hypertension monitoring, a sleep score feature, stronger Ion-X glass, and improved battery life. It was also Apple’s slimmest smartwatch to date when it was announced, measuring 9.7mm thick. 

The new watch is among the first products launched under Apple’s new CEO, John Ternus, who stepped in for Tim Cook on September 1st. Ternus directly oversaw development of previous Apple Watches as Apple’s head of hardware engineering before becoming the company’s CEO.  

The launch also follows a wave of price hikes earlier this year that impacted nearly all of Apple’s products, although not its smartwatches — the Apple Watch has consistently started at $399 for several years now.