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Anyone who follows Apple news knows the company has some big announcements on the horizon. While we don't know the exact date yet, Apple typically hosts a big fall keynote in September to announce brand new products—including the latest generation of iPhones. This year should prove especially monumental, as the world expects Apple to reveal its first foldable iPhone, the iPhone Ultra.

But while I expected to wait until next month to learn about Apple's newest devices, I was surprised to find Mac news on my feed Tuesday morning. Apple being Apple, the company made a few new announcements well ahead of its expected keynote, signaling both its enthusiasm for the Mac in this age of AI, but also that its fall event is likely going to be focused squarely on the iPhone. Here's what's new.

If you like making predictions about what products and services Apple will announce this year, make sure to check out Lifehacker's Big Guessing Game, which is currently in its third round. The winner will win the latest Apple Watch.

Apple's new Mac mini is more powerful (and expensive) than ever

The star of the show today might just be the new Mac mini. Apple's tiny Mac has been all the rage lately, with users buying them up to power AI agents like OpenClaw. While the previous generation of Mac mini was getting harder to find, Apple's refreshed models might make them more accessible—so long as you're willing to pay the inflated price tag.

At first glance, the new Mac mini looks the same as the previous Mac mini. Of course, the core upgrade is internal: Now, the Mac mini comes with one of two of Apple's M-series chips: the brand-new M6 and the existing, more powerful, M5 Pro. The M6 chip has a 12-core GPU (two more cores than the previous generation) with a 16-core NPU. Apple says that M6 has up to four times the AI performance as the M4 Mac mini, double the storage speeds and graphics, and up to 40% faster CPU gains. (Apple seems keenly aware that its core market for the mini is now AI users.) The M5 Pro, on the other hand, can ship with a CPU up to 18 cores and GPU up to 20 cores. You can upgrade the M5 Pro with up to 64GB of RAM, double the maximum memory of the M6.

Whichever Mac mini model you get, Apple says the machine comes with Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, and 2.5Gb Ethernet—though you have the option to upgrade to 10Gb Ethernet, as well. You get two USB-C ports in the front with a headphone jack, as well as genlock support via USB-C for better sync between the display and your camera.

The new Mac mini is available to pre-order today. The M6 model starts at $899, while the M5 Pro model starts at $1,699. Both models are now $100 more than their previous-generation counterparts, which isn't surprising, seeing as the global memory crisis is pushing companies to raise prices across the board. Apple itself had already raised prices ahead of this release.

Apple's new Mac Studio comes with the new M5 Ultra

Apple's offer for users who want more power out of their Macs is the new Mac Studio. Again, this model looks similar to the previous one, but it's what's inside that's different.

The new Mac Studio comes with either Apple's M5 Max or its brand-new M5 Ultra chip. Apple says M5 Max offers 3.9 times faster AI performance than the previous generation, with an 18-core CPU and up to a 40-core GPU. The company claims the new Neural Accelerators are now 50% faster than the last Mac Studio, and you can configure it with up to 128GB of RAM.

Apple says M5 Ultra offers 4.3 times the "peak AI compute performance of M3 Ultra." If you're coming from M1 Ultra, Apple says you can expect up to 9.8 times more performance. You can configure a Mac Studio with M5 Ultra with a CPU with up to 36 cores, and a GPU with up to 80 cores, which Apple says is its most powerful graphics processor ever. At launch, you can configure the M5 Ultra with up to 256GB of RAM, but Apple says you'll soon be able to upgrade to 512GB.

The Studio has a full array of I/O components, including four Thunderbolt 5 ports, Ethernet, two USB-A ports, HDMI, and a headphone jack. You can connect it with up to eight displays, or up to four Studio Display XDRs.

You can pre-order Mac Studios today, starting at $2,499 for the M5 Max model, or $5,499 for the M5 Ultra model. (Though you can certainly pay a lot more if you upgrade the components.) The M5 Max price is technically unchanged, but it is the price Apple increased the Studio line to back in June. The M5 Ultra is now $200 more than it was before.

Apple quietly upgraded other products today, too

While Apple's official announcements were focused on its two new Mac models and M-series chips, it quietly updated some other products, as well. If you go to buy a new Magic Keyboard from Apple today, you'll notice some of the keys are different, replacing the text with glyphs (e.g., an arrow icon instead of "caps lock" text). While the keyboards are functionally the same, these small updates bring the design in line with Apple's latest laptops.

Apple's much-memed "Polishing Cloth" is also changed today, but for the better. While the product itself is the same, it now costs $9, rather than $19. It feels a bit more reasonable to drop it in your cart now, even if it is just a cloth with the Apple logo embossed in the corner.


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Garmin has just unveiled two new premium adventure smartwatches: the Fenix 9 and the Fenix 9 Pro. The product announcement came earlier today in a YouTube live event called "Play Harder"—clearly taking a page out of the Google or Apple playbook for product launches.

The Garmin Fenix 9 starts at $999.99 and costs up to $1,149.99 depending on size and color combinations. The Fenix 9 Pro and Pro Solar start at $1,099.99 and go up to $1,249.99, depending on size and color. Both watches are already listed on Garmin's site, and orders officially open on Aug. 28. Here's what we know so far about these latest additions to the Garmin lineup.

What we know about the new Garmin Fenix 9 and Fenix 9 Pro

Marketed as Garmin's "most advanced training, mapping, and connectivity experience yet," here are the most notable features we learned from today's livestream about the Fenix 9 and 9 Pro. Starting with design and style:

  • A brighter AMOLED display reaching up to 3,000 nits (for context, the Fenix 8 AMOLED is 1,000 nits).

  • A new 1.5-inch display option on the 51 mm Pro model (larger than Fenix 8 Pro's 1.4 inches).

  • The Fenix 9 Pro is the first Fenix smartwatch to feature a titanium watch case.

  • New ComfortFit accessory bands with a stretchy fabric design.

Here are the software updates that caught my eye:

  • Garmin Epic (not to be confused with its Epix line) is a new feature in Garmin Connect that lets you group multiple activities and training blocks into a single, shareable story.

  • New stamina tracking features—including stamina zones and stamina curve—show athletes how their endurance changes over time.

  • Additional indoor rowing insights and expanded rucking features (a nod to the growing rucking and hybrid-training crowd).

  • With 64 GB of memory, you can download twice as many maps as the Fenix 8, and store up to 7,000 songs.

  • Built-in routable maps that Garmin claims are "smoother and more intuitive than ever before." With 50% more RAM than the Fenix 8, map panning will allegedly get up to 30% faster.

  • For the first time, connectivity with inReach (Garmin's satellite communicators) is available on all Fenix 9 Pro size options.

  • The Fenix 9 Pro also offers the option for solar-charging displays.

Notably, the optical heart rate sensor hasn't changed—it's still the Elevate Gen 5 sensor from the last generation, so anyone hoping for a sensor bump will have to wait for a future release.

What this means for Garmin fans

As is no surprise these days, the steep pricing here suggests Garmin is positioning this as an evolutionary release for its most dedicated users, rather than a reasonable way for casual Fenix 8 owners to immediately upgrade.

The 16% thinner titanium case could be a big draw for existing Fenix fans. That said, as with any product launch, the marketing demos and spec sheets only tell part of the story. Things like real-world battery life, fit and comfort, and software stability tend to reveal themselves over weeks of actual use, so stay tuned for my full review after I get the chance to put this watch through its paces.

There's also a silver lining here: The Fenix 9's arrival has already pushed Fenix 8 prices down from $1,099.99 to $849.99. If you don't need titanium or the latest mapping engine, last year's model could be today's savvy value buy.


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If you’re looking to upgrade your smartwatch, the Garmin Fēnix® 8 in titanium with a gray band is now 23% off, making it $849.99, down from $1099.99. Its 1.4-inch AMOLED display has a brightness of 1000 nits and its lens is scratch resistant. With its wide range of built-in sports apps, this Garmin tracks your endurance, stamina, resistance to injury, and other workout-related performance metrics. It also monitors sleep quality, heart rate, and respiration.

When fully charged, you can get up to 16 days of use in smartwatch mode and 47 hours in GPS mode. It is compatible with both Android and iOS systems, as well as laptops, tablets, and PCs. The Garmin Fēnix® 8 features off-grid voice command technology, so you can still control your smartphone even if you don’t have connection. It also includes a gyroscope and barometric altimeter, so you always know your location and what the weather has in store for you. Finally, it’s waterproof, with a 40-meter (130-foot) dive rating, and comes with a one-year warranty.   

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If you keep tabs on your Android app updates in the Play Store, you might have noticed something odd: You have an app called "Android Pulse" on your phone. Most of us have way too many apps on our phones, and it's easy to forget that we downloaded some of them—especially when we install them once and never use them again. But I'd wager that not only do you have no recollection of downloading Android Pulse, but you have no idea what Android Pulse even is.

I had certainly never heard of Android Pulse before Monday morning, though I admit I spend far more time on iOS than on Android. Luckily, I don't think any level of Android knowledge or use would prime one to know about the app, as it appears Android Pulse is only three days old. As reported by 9to5Google, Android Pulse started appearing in Play Store updates as early as Saturday morning. In fact, its Play Store listing shows that it was released on August 21 of this year by none other than Google itself. And yet, after only three days on the Play Store, Android Pulse has over 10 million downloads.

Android Pulse has been working in the background on your phone

As it turns out, Google didn't silently install a random app on tens of millions of Android users' devices. Rather, it's the Play Store listing itself that's new, not Android Pulse. According to its Play Store description, Android Pulse "facilitates rule distribution for anomaly detection in critical system resource consumption by the Android operating system and installed applications."

In layman's terms? Android Pulse keeps a virtual eye out for any suspicious processes that consume excessive system resources in both Android and your phone's apps. There are many possibilities there: It may be that Android Pulse looks for apps that put an unnecessary strain on the CPU or GPU, or system processes that drain your battery more than usual. Whatever the case, Android Pulse monitors for unusual activity affecting your phone and how it functions. And despite its new "app," there isn't much you can do with it. It isn't even clear if Android Pulse helps Android OS fix itself, or if Google simply receives the reports to help with future stability updates.

Interestingly, while the Play Store says the app is three days old, APKMirror says its first iteration dropped in March. Whatever the case, Android Pulse only made itself known this weekend, so it's news to most—if not all—of us.

What should I do about Android Pulse?

The short answer? Nothing. Android Pulse appears to be a background system resource that just so happens to appear in app form. In fact, based on screenshots from Android Authority, it doesn't even appear that you can uninstall it. You might be able to disable or force stop Pulse, but I'm not sure you'd want to. The "app" is designed to root out system hogs; I suspect it won't become one itself.


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Many of us don't think twice about the OS our smartphones are running. On the surface, it really seems like there are only two options: iOS, for those of us with iPhones, and Android, for all other phones. But the conversation is much more nuanced than that: Many non-Apple smartphone manufacturers have their own takes on Android that make for a slightly different experience. Samsung has One UI, OnePlus (RIP) has OxygenOS, and Nothing has Nothing OS, for example. (Pixel ships with stock Android, as Google makes both the hardware and the software.)

However, the mobile OS rabbit hole goes even deeper. If you're particularly technical (and you don't have an iPhone) you can install a new OS on your smartphone to give you added control or features you won't find on Android. GrapheneOS just so happens to be one of those custom OSes, and its list of supported devices is about to grow.

What is GrapheneOS?

GrapheneOS is an open-source mobile OS designed with privacy and security in mind. While the OS is built on the Android Open Source Project, it employs a number of privacy and security features to both thwart common security vulnerabilities and block invasive trackers from scraping your data. Because it's built on Android, it supports Android apps, but won't include Google apps or services by default. It won't block Google Play outright, however: Users can choose to install Google Play in a "sandbox," which limits the elements of your phone Google's apps and services can access.

Crucially, GrapheneOS has a long list of requirements manufacturers must meet before it decides to support new devices. Some of those key prerequisites include the ability to run alternate OSes with full hardware security access, commitments for at least five years of updates, secure element integration, and hardware memory tagging, among many others. If you want to run this custom OS that prioritizes privacy and security, you either need to pick your new smartphone carefully, or hope your preferred manufacturer creates a device in the future that meets these specifications.

GrapheneOS is coming to Motorola phones next year

As of this article, only Google's Pixel phones currently support GrapheneOS—though GrapheneOS doesn't necessarily recommend using all supported Pixels at this time. The OS will run on Pixel 6 and newer (minus Pixel 11) but GrapheneOS recommends at least Pixel 8 or newer, because of Google's minimum seven years support, and Pixel 8's hardware memory tagging.

However, Pixels won't be the exclusive choice for GrapheneOS for long. The OS maker has been working with Motorola to bring support to its phones. And, as reported by The Verge, GrapheneOS recently announced some key updates on this front. Of note, Motorola's 2027 lineup of "slab" phones (non-folding, in other words) are currently planned to be the first to support GrapheneOS, which should support Qualcomm's upcoming Snapdragon 8 Elite chips. GrapheneOS explained its thought process in a Mastodon thread: It says that Motorola's current-generation phones, including the Motorola Signature, Razr Fold, and Razr Ultra, "are very close" to meeting its aforementioned security requirements, but are missing some crucial features coming to Motorola's 2027 lineup, including adequate secure element integration.

GrapheneOS also emphasizes its enthusiasm for Snapdragon chips, which it says provide better CPU and GPU performance as well as isolated components (such as cellular, wifi, Bluetooth), over Google's proprietary Tensor chip. GrapheneOS says that Tensor has been a "sidegrade or downgrade" from Snapdragon in many ways, but came with security advantages that Snapdragon hasn't caught up to yet—though that now appears to be changing. While GrapheneOS has found it harder to work with Pixel in recent years, the company says that Motorola has done much of the work in bringing GrapheneOS to its devices, which is encouraging: My guess is users who choose to install GrapheneOS should find it well-optimized.

GrapheneOS says it plans to support Motorola's foldable and flippable phones as well. The company says that it already supports the Pixel Fold, Pixel 9 Pro Fold, and Pixel 10 Pro Fold, so the foldable form factor is nothing new. However, a "flip" phone is a new design for the company. In addition, GrapheneOS is working on support for the 11th-generation Pixel devices.


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Proton’s AI Paper Trail is a free tool designed to make the information accumulated across AI conversations easier to see. It analyzes exported ChatGPT or Claude conversation data and produces a personal privacy report showing what can be inferred from those conversations. Proton says the uploaded data is deleted after analysis and is not stored on Lumo’s servers.

AI conversations can reveal a surprising amount about their users over time. Individual questions may seem harmless, but months or years of interactions can contain information about work, relationships, habits, interests, purchases, travel plans, and other personal details.

I decided to try it using my personal ChatGPT history on the free plan to see what it “knows” about me. ChatGPT is the only AI assistant I use on my iPhone, where I also have antivirus, a VPN, and scam protection.

To generate a report, I exported my ChatGPT data, downloaded the resulting ZIP file to my iPhone, and uploaded it to AI Paper Trail through Safari.

AI Paper Trail

What the report reveals

AI Paper Trail analyzes the 200 most recent prompts and generates several views of the information it finds. These include a privacy type, an AI Exposure Score, personal information revealed through conversations, and an estimate of the value of that data.

It identified 47 data points and gave me an AI Exposure Score of 58/100, putting me in the “Leaving receipts” category. The report estimated my advertising value at $185 and identified five red flags.

AI Paper Trail

What stood out was not so much the score itself, but how much Paper Trail could piece together from ordinary conversations. It found data across areas such as location, interests, technology use, finances, and relationships, with location, interests, and technology showing the greatest exposure.

Some of the prompts it considered revealing were questions I would not normally think of as particularly sensitive. Individually, they disclosed little. Combined with other conversations they helped build a much more detailed profile.

The results should not necessarily be treated as facts. Paper Trail makes inferences from conversations, and researching a location, product, or subject does not automatically mean it relates to the person asking about it. Even so, seeing what could be inferred from my own conversation history showed how quickly seemingly unrelated information can accumulate.

Final thoughts

AI Paper Trail makes an otherwise abstract privacy issue easy to understand. Seeing travel destinations, purchasing habits, technology preferences, hobbies, family context, and other details reconstructed from ordinary questions changes the way those conversations look in retrospect. It also shows just how much can be pieced together from the trail of prompts left behind.


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AWS Network Firewall’s rule hit count capability gives security teams visibility into which stateful firewall rules are matching traffic, helping them identify unused or redundant rules and validate whether security controls are working as intended.

The capability covers stateful rules in both custom and managed rule groups, while stateless rules are not supported.

The feature is enabled by default and comes at no additional Network Firewall cost, although standard charges still apply for storing and querying log data. Rule hit counts are available in all AWS Regions where AWS Network Firewall is supported, except Middle East (UAE and Bahrain).

“With this data, you can identify and remove unused rules, accelerate incident response, and validate security control effectiveness for compliance,” the authors said.

AWS Network Firewall protects Amazon Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs) with automated, intelligence-driven network security. Customers can create granular rules to control traffic and use AWS-managed rules powered by Amazon threat intelligence to block active threats, with capabilities including geographic IP filtering, deep packet inspection, intrusion prevention, and proxy functionality.

AWS said organizations with governance policies requiring dormant rules to be removed after a defined period have lacked a mechanism to identify them. Teams responsible for compliance frameworks such as PCI DSS 4.0 and the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) can struggle to provide evidence that specific controls are actively functioning.

How it works

Rule hit counts track how often stateful firewall rules match network traffic. The counter increments when a rule match generates an alert log. Rules with alert, drop, or reject actions generate these logs automatically, while rules configured with a pass action must include the alert keyword to appear in the metric.

AWS adds rule group metadata to alert logs, which the Network Firewall monitoring dashboard uses to calculate hit counts and give security teams a view of rule activity without requiring them to query the underlying logs manually.

“You can also access and analyze this data by querying those logs directly using CloudWatch Logs Insights for logs stored in CloudWatch, or Amazon Athena for logs stored in Amazon S3,” the authors continued.

The metadata is automatically included in firewall logs and can be used in custom dashboards.

Seeing which firewall rules are active

The Network Firewall dashboard includes a Top Rule Hits view showing the most frequently triggered stateful rules over a selected period, including their hit counts, share of overall activity, rule details, and last occurrence.

AWS Network Firewall rule

Top Rule Hits panel from the AWS Network Firewall console (Source: AWS)

Rules whose signature IDs do not appear in the metric have not matched traffic during the selected timeframe. AWS said this could indicate that a rule is stale or incorrectly ordered within its rule group.

The view can be useful during incident response. AWS gives an example of a rule detecting traffic to an out-of-band application security testing (OAST) domain, which could indicate attempted data exfiltration or an attacker validating a vulnerability. Filtering the metric to the timeframe of a suspected incident can help analysts identify relevant activity without manually parsing thousands of log entries.

AWS demonstrated how hit counts can validate recently introduced controls using rules covering AI and machine learning domains and geofencing restrictions on outbound traffic. Recorded hits showed that the rules were matching traffic as intended.


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