Your Friday edition of the day’s best deals on Apple gear and accessories starts off with ongoing pre-order offers on the new iPad mini 7, but we also spotted a new low on the Apple Watch Series 10 in Jet Black alongside the best price to date on Apple’s new . From there, we move over to a frankly wild discount on the official iPhone 16 Camera Control cases that are now starting at just $25, these gorgeous Satechi backlit Apple-style keyboards at 30% off, a deep deal on iPhone 15 Pro, and more. Scope it all out down below. 

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Apple has just discontinued its Powerbeats Pro wireless headphones. They are no longer available from the Apple Store and have been removed altogether from Beats’ own website. But it’s not all bad news: a major refresh is still coming soon.

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Best Buy today introduced new all-time low prices on a few models of the 14-inch M3 MacBook Pro exclusively for members. Non-members can still find solid second-best prices on these computers, but My Best Buy Plus/Total members can get an extra $200 off select notebooks this week.

Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with Best Buy. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment, which helps us keep the site running.

The highlights of the sale include the 8GB/1TB 14-inch M3 MacBook Pro for $1,299.00, down from $1,799.00, and the 16GB/1TB model for $1,499.00, down from $1,999.00. Both of these represent $500 discounts and are new record low prices for each model.




If you're shopping for the bigger model, the steepest discount at Best Buy is on the 48GB/1TB M3 Max 16-inch MacBook Pro, available for $3,299.00 for members, down from $3,999.00. In addition to this model, Best Buy has every other 16-inch M3 MacBook Pro on sale right now for solid second-best prices.

Our full Deals Roundup has more information on the latest Apple-related sales and bargains.
This article, "Best Buy Introduces Massive Discounts on M3 MacBook Pro for Members, Get Up to $700 Off" first appeared on MacRumors.com

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Apple at some point in the past week or so discontinued the Powerbeats Pro, around five and a half years after the wireless earbuds launched.


Powerbeats Pro are a sportier, fitness-focused alternative to AirPods Pro with built-in, adjustable ear hooks for a secure fit. Key features of the original Powerbeats Pro include the H1 chip that debuted in the AirPods 2, IPX4-rated sweat and water resistance, up to nine hours of battery life, and silicone ear tips with four size options.

In a short teaser video last month, Apple revealed that it will be launching new Powerbeats Pro 2 next year. The earbuds look similar to the original Powerbeats Pro, but they have a more vertical, slimmer design. MacRumors contributor Aaron Perris later discovered iOS 18 code revealing that the Powerbeats Pro 2 will feature heart rate monitoring during workouts, and gain support for Active Noise Cancellation, Spatial Audio, and Adaptive Audio.


The leaked iOS 18 code also revealed new orange, purple, black, and beige color options for the Powerbeats Pro 2 and their charging case.

Based on other recent Beats headphones, other potential upgrades for the Powerbeats Pro 2 include improved sound quality, longer battery life, a USB-C charging case, and improved cross-platform compatibility with Android features like Find My Device.

Apple did not reveal a specific release date in 2025 for the Powerbeats Pro 2.

The rumored heart rate monitoring feature has also been rumored for the AirPods Pro in the past, so perhaps the feature will extend to the AirPods Pro 3.
This article, "Apple Discontinues Powerbeats Pro, New Model Launching Next Year With These Features" first appeared on MacRumors.com

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It’s been a fun week for fans of Bill Lawrence-created shows on Apple TV+. The new season of Shrinking debuted, then immediately got a season 3 pickup. Lawrence shared that Bad Monkey is planned out for three seasons. Now, Apple TV+ has set the date for when filming of Ted Lasso season 4 begins.

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Just like iPhone 16 models, the new iPad mini is likely to launch without Apple Intelligence, but the features should be available on the device soon.


Geekbench results for the iPad mini with the A17 Pro chip list the device as running iPadOS 18.0, instead of iPadOS 18.1 with Apple Intelligence.

Last month, a private account on social media platform X with a proven track record of sharing upcoming iOS versions mentioned a special build of iPadOS 18.0 for the iPad mini 7, and it appears that the device will indeed come preinstalled with iPadOS 18.0 out of the box when it begins arriving to customers on Wednesday, October 23.

Fortunately, new iPad mini owners shouldn't have to wait too long for Apple Intelligence. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman this week reiterated his expectation that iPadOS 18.1 will be released on Monday, October 28, so Apple Intelligence should be available on the new iPad mini merely five days after the device launches.

Apple's press release for the new iPad mini had already mentioned that the first Apple Intelligence features would be available on the device starting with an iPadOS 18.1 software update this month, and now the situation is fully clear.

The first Apple Intelligence features include writing tools, notification summaries, and more.
This article, "Here's When to Expect Apple Intelligence to Launch on the New iPad Mini" first appeared on MacRumors.com

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A new survey reveals that almost half of Americans have forgotten to cancel a trial subscription. It also corroborates earlier findings that we’re now spending around $1,000 a year on subscription services.

The survey comes as the FCC announced new rules ensuring that companies can’t use deceptive practices to hook us into taking out subscriptions, nor make it hard to cancel them …

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Ahead of Apple’s quarterly earnings later this month, we’re getting a better picture of how the iPhone 16 line is selling—and it looks very good. The latest evidence is a report on sales in China, where Apple is seeing big launch numbers despite uncertainty around its Apple Intelligence rollout.

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The US Commerce Department is carrying out an investigation into whether Apple chipmaker TSMC breached US sanctions against China by supplying smartphone and AI chips to Huawei. The probe was in part driven by Huawei’s surprising ability to resume competing with iPhones.

If found guilty, TSMC could potentially face sanctions which might interfere with its ability to produce future Apple chips …

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Apple announced a new iPad mini on Tuesday, powered by the A17 Pro chip with support for Apple Intelligence features. The first new iPad mini orders are set to arrive to customers next week, but early benchmarks have now surfaced on Geekbench. These results confirm that the latest iPad mini features 8GB of RAM, and give us a glimpse at the performance of the binned A17 Pro chip inside.

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Whenever an Apple device generates a strong password for you, the structure of those secure passwords isn’t entirely random.

Instead, Apple created rules specifically designed to make them easier to type if you ever have to do that manually, and to make them briefly memorable …

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The seventh-generation iPad mini has now appeared on Geekbench, confirming that it has 8GB of memory and revealing how the 5-core GPU version of the A17 Pro chip performs.


The new ‌iPad mini‌, identified as iPad 16,2 on the Geekbench database, includes the same A17 Pro SoC first introduced in the iPhone 15 Pro series last year. The six-core chip is clocked at 3.78 GHz, which matches the iPhone version, but with a key distinction—a five-core GPU, which is one core less than the version found in the ‌iPhone‌. This suggests that the iPad mini 7's A17 Pro chip is likely a "binned" version.

The new ‌iPad mini‌'s Geekbench scores reveal a range between 2,710 and 2,840 in single-core performance and 6,274 to 6,982 in multi-core performance, positioning it slightly below the ‌iPhone 15‌ Pro in both metrics. For comparison, the ‌iPhone 15‌ Pro's A17 Pro typically scores around 2,888 in single-core and 7,169 in multi-core tests.

Nonetheless, the benchmarks confirm that the new ‌iPad mini‌ offers a substantial performance upgrade over its predecessor. The sixth-generation ‌iPad mini‌ from 2021 achieved approximate single-core scores of 2,121 and multi-core scores of 5,367.

	Chip	GPU cores	Memory	Single-Core CPU Score	Multi-Core CPU Score	Metal GPU Score
‌iPad mini‌ 6 (2021)	A15 Bionic	5	4GB	2,121	5,367	19,486
‌iPad mini 7‌ (2024)	A17 Pro	5	8GB	2,840	6,982	25,895
‌iPhone 15‌ Pro (2023)	A17 Pro	6	8GB	2,888	7,169	27,144

The Geekbench listings also confirm the seventh-generation ‌iPad mini‌'s adoption of 8GB of memory. While this was expected due to Apple Intelligence's 8GB memory, it was not actually known until now. The previous-generation ‌iPad mini‌ featured just 4GB of memory, marking a substantial upgrade on the latest device.
This article, "iPad Mini 7 Benchmarks Confirm 8GB RAM, 5-Core GPU's Slower Speeds" first appeared on MacRumors.com

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The FCC has announced new requirements for all smartphones to be compatible with all Bluetooth hearing aids, and one quirky impact is that this will include AirPods Pro 2.

It will also require iPhones to support all Bluetooth hearing aids, not just MFi ones …

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The latest Apple Store opened today in Belfast, Northern Ireland – with local schoolchildren getting access to it ahead of the opening.

The location of the store is carefully described as being “on the island of Ireland” rather than “in Ireland” …

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Ahead of a rollout starting in November, Oppo has revealed ColorOS 15 with some big UI changes, but also a lot of… let’s say “inspiration” from iOS.

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As we reported in August, a change coming to the App Store in the European Union would force developers to provide a public address and phone number that would become visible to customers in the region. As of today, the change has come into effect and developers are required to provide this data to Apple.

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Instagram and Spotify on Thursday announced an update to both apps that will bring new integration to make their users’ lives a bit easier. Instagram users will now have a quick and easy way to add songs they like to their Spotify library with just a few taps.

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Since iOS 9, iPads have had a basic multitasking system where users can split the screen between two apps. However, with iPadOS 16, Apple has finally allowed some models of iPads to run apps in windows with Stage Manager. The main requirement for Stage Manager was RAM, and now that the has more RAM, I think Apple should bring Stage Manager to it somehow.

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Some iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro users have been experiencing excessive and unexplainable battery drain, according to complaints on Reddit, the Apple Support Communities, and the MacRumors forums. While many of the reports are from ‌iPhone 16‌ users, older iPhones running iOS 18 may also be experiencing battery life issues.


There is a long-running ‌iOS 18‌ battery life complaint thread on MacRumors that was started while the update was still in beta, but there have been a fresh wave of complaints following ‌iOS 18‌'s launch and the debut of the ‌iPhone 16‌ models.

Affected ‌iPhone 16‌ owners have seen significant battery drain even when the iPhone is not in use. From MacRumors reader T1aaj:

Yes I own the 16 pro and battery life goes down to almost 60% from 100% halfway through the day, through no heavy use. Definitely needs to be fixed, should've kept my 15 pro!

From JulianL:

I'm getting horrible battery life with my new 16 Pro Max. I upgraded from a 15 Pro Max - upgraded to iOS 18 and with battery health of 99% when I sold it. With Apple quoting better battery life spec for the 16 I was excited to see how much more run time I would get. The answer? I now get 50 to 60% of time between charges vs what I got with my 1 year old 15 Pro Max. Really disappointing. All Settings the same including background refresh globally disabled, screen max refresh set to 60Hz and data locked to 4G (because for my use I see absolutely no difference in how my phone functions when I set all those settings so I might as well set them for optimal battery life). I got my 16PM on launch day so it's 19 days old now; any early days indexing and other background setup stuff should be well and truly over by now.

In some cases, much of the battery drain happens in standby mode when the ‌iPhone‌ isn't in use, suggesting a background activity could be causing problems for some users. Using the phone seems to cut the battery drain in these instances.

From huanbrother:

The 16 Pro has horrible standby battery life when sleeping (it is not connected to my Apple Watch), and as you can see from the graph, it runs background activities like crazy. But, guess what, I turned off AOD(but this shouldn't be the case when in sleep mode it was off anyways) and turned on frame limit in accessibility (not low power mode) to turn off ProMotion, boom, the background craze disappeared! However, the battery drain wasn't fixed, 4hours and 20minutes it drained 11%, from 70% to 59%.

From kirbysmartdawg:

Clearly, something isn't right on Apple's end. The idle battery drain is excessive. This morning, I unplugged my phone at 9 a.m., and it held at 95% (my charging limit) for only 20 minutes before starting to drop rapidly. Every five minutes, I lost a percentage until I finally picked it up to use it. Now it seems to have stabilized a bit, but I'm really puzzled by this behavior.

There are similar complaints about the ‌iPhone 16‌ models and older iPhones running ‌iOS 18‌ on Reddit, and while we always see reports of battery life issues when a new version of iOS comes out, there seems to be a definite uptick in the number of people having problems.

From Reddit user Ok-Interest-6561:

I upgraded from my iPhone 12 and got new 16 Pro. I upgraded mostly because of battery and speaker issues but I observed that even though 16 has "better battery" and more battery life, it drains around 10-15% overnight doing nothing just laying on my bedside table.

On Reddit, one user did an experiment with an ‌iPhone 16 Pro‌ and an iPhone 14 Pro, and claimed to have used both in the same way. The ‌iPhone 16 Pro‌ dropped to 58 percent battery life within 36 hours, while the ‌iPhone 14‌ Pro was at 85 percent.

Battery drainage issues are difficult to diagnose because ‌iPhone‌ usage habits vary so much from person to person and from day to day. Impacted users have tried turning off ProMotion, disabling the Always On display, turning off background app refresh, removing widgets, turning off cellular, and entirely resetting their iPhones. Some people have seen improvement with some of these methods, but not all have, and the battery life issues persist for many despite troubleshooting.

Some users reported improvement with iOS 18.0.1 and the iOS 18.1 beta, but software updates have not worked for everyone. It is not clear exactly what's going on to impact battery, but it's sounding like there is an underlying bug that Apple will need to fix in a future ‌iOS 18‌ update.
This article, "iPhone 16 Users Complain About Excessive iOS 18 Battery Drain" first appeared on MacRumors.com

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Apple is working behind the scenes to get ready to add new Apple Intelligence features to iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS 15. We'll get the first set in the iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1, and macOS 15.1 updates, but Apple is preparing for the next batch, too.


In backend code, MacRumors has discovered new references to Siri's ChatGPT integration as Apple prepares to implement ChatGPT support. ‌Siri‌ code mentions options for ChatGPT-generated text and ChatGPT-generated images, two features that Apple plans to implement soon.

ChatGPT integration with ‌Siri‌ was announced as part of the Apple Intelligence feature set highlighted at the Worldwide Developers Conference, and it is functionality that Apple plans to introduce before the end of the year. ChatGPT integration is not in the current software that Apple is testing, but we are expecting it to come in iOS 18.2, iPadOS 18.2, and macOS Sequoia 15.2.

Mentions of ‌Siri‌ with ChatGPT integration first surfaced earlier in October, and we've also seen references to Visual Intelligence, another AI feature that Apple is working on. The separate mentions of images and text are new today, and it's clear that Apple is continuing behind-the-scenes work to get these features ready for launch.

With ChatGPT integration, when users ask ‌Siri‌ a complicated question that the personal assistant is unable to handle, ‌Siri‌ will suggest handing the query off to ChatGPT. ChatGPT will provide relevant information, which will be relayed through ‌Siri‌.

ChatGPT will be able to generate both text and images, and while Apple Intelligence includes some of this functionality, ChatGPT is more advanced. Apple's Writing Tools, for example, can offer spelling and grammar assistance or change the tone of something that's already written, while ChatGPT will be able to generate text from scratch with a simple prompt.

Image Playground and Genmoji will allow for the creation of cartoon-like images and custom emoji, but ChatGPT's image generation features will be able to be used for more realistic images. ‌Siri‌ will reference the latest GPT-4o model, and ChatGPT integration will be free with no account creation required. Apple and OpenAI will not store ChatGPT requests made from Apple devices, and IP addresses will be hidden.

As for Visual Intelligence, it is an iPhone 16 feature that uses the Camera Control button. ‌iPhone 16‌ users will be able to point their camera at objects or locations around them, with the iPhone providing information about what's being viewed when the Camera Control button is pressed and held.

iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1, and ‌macOS Sequoia‌ 15.1 are expected to see a release on Monday, October 28, and we'll likely get the first betas of iOS 18.2, iPadOS 18.2, and ‌macOS Sequoia‌ 15.2 shortly after. If testing follows other .2 updates, the software will be released at some point in December.

Along with ChatGPT integration and Visual Intelligence, iOS 18.2 could bring support for the Image Playground image generation feature, Genmoji, and Image Wand, a Notes app feature for generating images from text or basic drawings.
This article, "Apple Preparing to Add ChatGPT Integration to Siri" first appeared on MacRumors.com

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In possibly a first since the release of macOS Sequoia, cybersecurity researchers have identified a new attack vector that sidesteps the usual “right-click, open” in favor of something rather unusual. In a recent finding shared on social media, this new method involves tricking users into dragging and dropping malicious code (via a .txt file) directly into the Terminal.

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