A report last year revealed that Elon Musk had plans to introduce a new charge for users who have just registered on X (formerly Twitter) on the grounds that this would be the only way to make the platform free of bots. Now Musk himself has confirmed his intentions and revealed more details about this potential fee.

A recent report revealed that Spotify is planning to raise the price of its subscription soon, at least in some countries. And for those who think that paying $10.99 a month for a music streaming platform is already too much, the company may soon introduce an even more expensive “Music Pro” subscription that will enable lossless audio and some other extra features.

Threads, Meta’s microblogging platform, has come a long way since its launch almost a year ago. However, Threads still lacks some important features – such as an option to show real-time search results. After Meta said it had no plans to make this a reality, the company is finally letting some Threads users see recent search results.

When WWDC kicks off on June 10, there will be a lot of attention on Apple’s plans for new artificial intelligence features. In the latest edition of his Power On newsletter, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reiterates that one of Apple’s primary focuses will be on privacy and on-device intelligence.

In a 9to5Mac Happy Hour Plus members-only episode, Benjamin and Chance watch BlackBerry, the 2023 film covering the “story of the meteoric rise and catastrophic demise of the world’s first smartphone.” 

Subscribe at 9to5Mac.com/join to listen and support the show directly! You’ll also get ad-free episodes, post-show content every week, and more.

• BlackBerry (2023) on Letterboxd

Trying to stand out among all the MagSafe accessories on the market can often be challenging. What makes one battery pack better than the others? What makes one stand better than the others? It can often come down to minor features, pricing, and form factor. That’s precisely what the UGREEN MagSafe battery pack aims to deliver: a robust battery pack at a fair price that can charge up to three devices at the same time.

Listen to a recap of the top stories of the day from 9to5Mac. 9to5Mac Daily is available on iTunes and Apple’s Podcasts app, Stitcher, TuneIn, Google Play, or through our dedicated RSS feed for Overcast and other podcast players.

Sponsored by Kolide by 1Password: The device trust solution that ensures that if a device isn’t secure, it can’t access your apps. Close the Zero Trust access gap for Okta. Watch the demo.

Earlier this month, Apple revised its App Store Guidelines to permit game emulator apps for the first time. On Saturday, one of the first such apps was approved: iGBA. This app allowed users to import and play ROMs download from the internet. On Sunday, however, the app was pulled from the App Store without full explanation.

Apple has now provided more clarity on why iGBA was removed from the App Store after initially being approved.

Monday’s best deals have a new all-time low on Apple’s just-released 15-inch M3 MacBook Air landing at $1,150 – a savings of $149. There’s also a chance to score the Sonos Era 300 smart speaker as it drops to $359 alongside Apple Pencil with USB-C returning to its all-time low of $69. Hit the jump for all that and more in the latest 9to5Toys Lunch Break.

Ookla is out with its latest report on 5G smartphone performance with the latest data including the new Samsung Galaxy S24 lineup. As it turns out, Samsung’s new smartphones saw faster median 5G performance than the iPhone 15 lineup in the majority of countries tested.

I’m sure it’s been said countless times before, but—now that would be a good name for a column!—iMessage could use a send quietly option that’s always available. Send quietly is a feature today, but it’s only available when the recipient is in a Focus mode.

Apple is using titanium on iPhone for the first time, but what’s safe or best to use for cleaning iPhone 15 Pro? Whether you just got your new phone or it’s been dirty for a while, let’s look at how to clean iPhone with step-by-step do’s and don’ts.

Global iPhone market share dropped 9.6% year-on-year in the first quarter of the year, enabling Samsung to retake the smartphone lead despite failing to increase its own shipments.

Apple saw the biggest slump of any brand, at a time when the global smartphone market as a whole continues to grow …

Apple is rolling out a new update to the Apple Sports app today ahead of NHL and NBA playoffs kicking off. The update brings additional details and information on NHL and NBA games for the playoffs, Apple says.

Apple CEO Tim Cook is in Vietnam, and said today that the company is “committed to continuing to strengthen connections” in the country as it seeks to reduce dependence on China.

In addition to investing more in the Vietnamese supply chain, Apple is also supporting a scheme intended to bring clean water to more than 42,000 children by the end of this month …

BlackMagic has long offered powerful hardware add-ons for video editors, but the four-figure pricing has been a barrier to many, with even the Micro Panel coming in at $895.

The latest DaVinci Resolve Micro Color Panel comes close to halving the cost, but also adds an iPad Pro slot and internal battery for portable editing …

The iPhone 16 Pro camera could see a small-sounding improvement which could turn out to fix what I see as one of the biggest problems with current and recent models: internal reflections.

While iPhone cameras have gotten better with each generation, and are now good enough that many of us use them as our primary camera, there is one issue which can significantly degrade images when shooting into the light …

While the Supreme Court denied appeal requests from both Apple and Epic Games in the App Store case, that didn’t put an end to legal wrangling between the two companies.

In January, Epic Games headed back to court to accuse Apple of failing to comply with the original antitrust ruling, and now the Cupertino company has asked a judge to dismiss the complaint …

Over the weekend, the first handheld console game emulator hit the App Store, following a relaxation in App Store Review Guidelines the week prior.

Fast forward 24 hours and the app is gone, pulled from the App Store. However, we aren’t sure why. It might be that ROM-loading emulators are actually not allowed, and this one slipped through. Or, it may be that iGBA was simply a clone of the open-source project GBA4iOS, and was pushed to the store without permission or appropriate licensing.

Apple is quickly moving ahead with its next-generation Apple Silicon plans. According to new reports this week, the first M4 Macs are expected as soon as later this year. Here’s what to expect.

Cybercrime is on an unprecedented rise. A new Statista Market Insights survey predicts that the annual cost of cyberattacks will reach $9.2 trillion this year. For perspective, that’s about one-third of the United States’ GDP or 24 times Apple’s annual revenue in 2023.

Here’s what I’ve learned after calling up a few industry professionals.

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Update: The app has now been removed from the App Store. Original story below.

Apple changed the App Store rules last week to seemingly permit game emulators on the iPhone for the first time.

Following that policy change, the first emulator apps are now appearing on the store. iGBA is a free Game Boy game emulator for iPhone and iPad, which can indeed load and play ROMs downloaded to the device — a category of application that Apple would have unequivocally rejected a fortnight ago.

Taylor Swift is about to release her newest album called “The Tortured Poets Department” on April 19. Last week, the singer had already partnered with Apple Music to release a series of playlists with a voice message from Taylor to promote her new album. Now Taylor Swift is using Apple Music lyrics to share some riddles with her fans.