iPhone 5s gets a software update 13 years after its debut.

Juli Clover from MacRumors:

iOS 12.5.8 is available for the iPhone 5s and the ‌iPhone‌ 6, meaning Apple is continuing to support these devices for 13 and 12 years after launch, respectively. The ‌iPhone‌ 5s came out in September 2013, while the ‌iPhone‌ 6 launched in September 2014.

According to Apple's release notes for the update, iOS 12.5.8 extends the certificate required for features like iMessage, FaceTime, and device activation, so they will continue to work after January 2027.

Originally, certificate-limited functions like device activation would have ceased when the certificate expired, but now key features on the two older iPhones will continue to work in the years to come.

Prior to now, the ‌iPhone‌ 5s and ‌iPhone‌ 6 last received software updates in January 2023, when Apple released important security fixes.

Quite unbelievable, honestly. How many of you were in diapers when this device was released? Even more unbelievable - people who are still using these devices today. I wish I could use a device in this smaller form factor, but it goes to show not everyone needs the latest and greatest.

Apple releases AirTag 2.

Day one of Apple announcements for the week starts off with its cheapest product.

Highlights of the new features:

Apple’s second-generation Ultra Wideband chip — the same chip found in the iPhone 17 lineup, iPhone Air, Apple Watch Ultra 3, and Apple Watch Series 11 — powers the new AirTag, making it easier to locate than ever before. Using haptic, visual, and audio feedback, Precision Finding guides users to their lost items from up to 50 percent farther away than the previous generation. And an upgraded Bluetooth chip expands the range at which items can be located. For the first time, users can use Precision Finding on Apple Watch Series 9 or later, or Apple Watch Ultra 2 or later, to find their AirTag, bringing a powerful experience to the wrist.

With its updated internal design, the new AirTag is 50 percent louder than the previous generation, enabling users to hear their AirTag from up to 2x farther than before. Paired with its enhanced Precision Finding capabilities and distinctive new chime, AirTag now makes it easier for users to find their important items, such as keys hidden deep in between couch cushions or a wallet as they head out the door.

The product page is more digestible. Looks like the best tracker just got better, and that’s not my bias either.

iPhone Air gets a SIM tray?

Saw this on Twitter the other day and the post has been picked up by 9to5Mac with the embedded video:

A viral post is making the rounds today, showcasing what appears to be an iPhone Air modified to include a SIM card slot.

Based on multiple reports on Chinese tech websites and social media, the mod was made by a creator credited simply as Huaqiangbei, which is also the name of a subdistrict of Shenzhen famous for selling cheap electronics. […]

According to multiple reports and posts about the viral video, the mod was achieved by replacing Apple’s haptic feedback component with a smaller, less potent motor, making space for the SIM tray.

As it usually happens with viral posts of modified iPhones, there is no shortage of comments claiming that, rather than being an original iPhone Air that was modified, the device is simply a clone meant to look exactly like Apple’s device.

Whatever the case may be, I’m still sticking to my original theory.

Nvidia CEO says it’s a good time to be a plumber.

Business Insider:

Speaking at the World Economic Forum on Wednesday, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said it was a great time to be a tradesperson because the AI boom is creating demand for manual labor to build data centers.

"It's wonderful that the jobs are related to tradecraft and we're going to have plumbers and electricians and construction and steelworkers," he said in a conversation with BlackRock CEO Larry Fink in Davos, Switzerland.

It’s the profession chosen by many AI “Godfathers” as their occupation of choice for future job market prospects. I would also suggest studying Nuclear Physics since nuclear power plants to power the future of AI is a real thing.

Dry January? More like high January.

The Atlantic (News+ link):

Many Americans enthusiastically partake in Dry January, but it is rarely pitched as fun. After the holiday stretch of office parties and family gatherings, Americans have come to use the start of every year to abstain from alcohol in the name of health and auspicious beginnings. It’s a time of discipline, of cleansing, of embodying your mood board, even if it makes you a drag at parties. And it is also, as weed companies have learned, a marketing opportunity.

In recent years, weed companies have started to lean into the argument that taking the edge off sobriety with a low-dose gummy or THC drink still counts as dry. My social-media feeds are flooded with posts from cannabis companies pitching their products as fun and approachable tools to get through an alcohol-free month. Mary and Jane, an edibles company, makes a tantalizing proposition: “Dry January made easy.” Artet, which specializes in beverages, sells a “High & Dry January” bundle that includes a bottle of its THC-laced aperitif. Some products are conspicuously health-coded: North Canna describes its cannabis drinks as “functional,” and Feals highlights its edibles’ low calorie count. Above all, the ads emphasize how little booze you drink when you get high instead.

This push for a weed-filled January is, of course, a blatant (and somewhat silly) attempt by cannabis companies to get more customers. But as restrictions on marijuana loosen, and more Americans find themselves able and willing to fit the drug into their lives, Dry January does appear to be offering an opportunity for experimentation. In fact, cannabis sales surged in January 2024, and 21 percent of Dry January participants who responded to a 2023 survey swapped booze for weed that month.

This type of liberalistic, “have what you want as long as it doesn’t affect anyone else,” mindset is what will eventually destroy civilizations, including ours. You can’t walk out of anywhere these days except you smell weed. Even right outside the hospital for God’s sake.

So much for starting the new year with optimism and healthier choices:

The shaky logic of replacing one drug with another during a month dedicated to sobriety is hard to ignore. If the point of Dry January is to improve health, replacing alcohol with cannabis—which is not a benign substance—seems counterproductive. Far less is known about the long-term use of cannabis compared with alcohol, but both can be abused, cause dependence, and interfere with daily function and productivity, Ryan Vandrey, who helps run Johns Hopkins’s Cannabis Science Laboratory, told me. Some people are predisposed to react negatively to cannabis, experiencing anxiety, paranoia, or even cyclical vomiting. Over time, long-term heavy cannabis use can exacerbate mental-health conditions such as schizophrenia and depression.

The cycle will continue, as increased schizophrenia and depression means prescribing more antidepressants and antipsychotics that people once again shouldn’t need, but it fuels the money circle fresh with even more cash. One of the reasons why I left traditional pharmacy is because you become a bonafide, legal drug dealer, depending on what city you work in.

That was over a decade ago, so I can’t even imagine how insane it must be today.

Just think - almost every area of healthcare that has increased treatment leads to better outcomes, except mental health.

One of the reasons why it’s true is because people aren’t living with purpose anymore. Many people don’t even think about the question:

“Why am I here?”

They’re always connected to a device, listening to something 24/7, are on some sort of drug cocktail, binge watching a new series, and so on.

They’ve never unplugged and detoxed their mind to really think about, “Why am I here?”

Is Apple making an AI pin similar to Humane?

Juli Clover from MacRumors (non-paywalled report from The Information):

Apple is working on a small, wearable AI pin equipped with multiple cameras, a speaker, and microphones, reports The Information. If it actually launches, the AI pin will likely run the new Siri chatbot that Apple plans to unveil in iOS 27.

The pin is said to be similar in size to an AirTag, with a thin, flat, circular disc shape. It has an aluminum and glass shell, and two cameras at the front. There is a standard lens and a wide-angle lens that are meant to capture photos and videos, while three microphones are designed to pick up sound around the wearer. An included speaker allows the pin to play audio, and there is a physical control button along one edge. The device is able to wirelessly charge like an Apple Watch.

Apple wants the final version of the pin to be about the same size as an ‌AirTag‌, but it will be slightly thicker. Currently, there is no built-in attachment method, but that could change later in development.

The Information says it is not clear if Apple plans to sell the pin on its own or bundle it with future smart glasses or other devices, but the physical button and built-in cameras, speakers, and microphones suggest that it can operate independently.

I can’t think of anyone who would want to wear a pin, not to mention how small it is and how easy it will get lost. On the other hand, if you can get a Vision Pro-like experience with this pin and a pair of regular sized glasses, that sounds appealing.

It sure beats Vision Pro abuse.

The title of this video doesn’t do it justice.

Another Steven Bartlett video that goes way beyond just the title. An eye opener for those trying to get a better understanding of how different government agencies work around the world.

Dear Apple: It’s turmeric, not tumeric

I will not acquiesce to such deviance. Turmeric is a miracle spice that deserves respect and has a right to be spelled with dignity. I typed “tumeric”in Docs, Pages, and even on Squarespace, and sure enough, it was flagged as a misspelled word.

The Islamic concept of Barakah present in Apple Product Design.

In a YouTube video with Muslim Founder, Peter Gould discusses how he talked to Apple Product Designers about Barakah (transcription below):

Yeah great question Well um I was once teaching teaching some Apple product designers in Cupertino in um in San Francisco head office and uh I remember kind of speaking to the audience like okay you’re familiar with things like Feng shui or Zen design or Wabi-sabi like Japanese like non-western design philosophy and they're like yeah like we're all cool designers - then I said, "Well how about Barakah?" And they're like "What?" It's like "Isn't that like a movie or something?"

And you know I'm just kind of paraphrasing but you know Barakah is such an essential part to you know maybe a quarter of the world's population in terms of how we think how we live our life how we aspire for this intangible divine goodness in a thing, Barakah, and uh you know as my my friend Muhammed Faris he wrote a book called The Barakah Effect And he once he kind of said "Peter we should think about ROI as return on intention rather than return on investment."

And so in these places and some of the places I've taught I intentionally use the language of the heart I don't call it Islamic design or like Muslim, you know in every human there is a heart. Every heart has a spiritual state, and someone designing an iPhone or designing you know really popular software, they can appreciate that, on the spiritual path like Alhamdulillah as as Muslims we are given a much richer understanding of what is the heart what is the ruh, what is the how, and then your amanah, your kind of responsibility, if you're designing for that, becomes much more serious, like you've got to be careful like, “am I just pulling people to distract them and addict them and whatever or am I trying to find ways to be uh very aware of my responsibility in design?”

A little deeper dive into Barakah can be found with an interview between Peter Gould and Muhammed Faris himself:

“Most definitions come down to things like ‘abundant, flowing, positive, divine energy that enters a thing’ — a tangible intangible that works in mysterious ways beyond logic to create an effect.

“Some scholars describe it as a hidden soldier of the soul. Meaning Allah sends Barakah into something like one of his soldiers. So it might enter your time, or your family, or your laptop, or your sleep, or your food. And it does some kind of spiritual chemical reaction there that leads to a benefit of abundance or goodness that’s hard to describe.  

“One example that many of us have experienced is when you invite friends over for dinner and you’ve prepared food for 10 people. But then one of your friends brings his whole family, and you look at the food and think it’s not going to be enough. But the Barakah is that it’s always enough. Sometimes there’s even leftovers as well. That’s a manifestation of Barakah as a result of your good intention to bring people over and feed them. […]

It’s not unusual, for example, for good things to happen with our work and for us to consider it as either luck, coincidence, or the results of our own hard work. But as Mohammed says, if we were to really take the time to look at how events have led to that ‘good thing’ happening, we would surely see something bigger at play.

“This is Barakah,” he says. “It’s Allah aligning things so perfectly that you look back and think ‘I could not have planned this’. Things had to align so perfectly to get to this exact point — you can’t just see it as cause and effect any more; it’s beyond that. 

“And the danger — especially for entrepreneurs and start-ups — is that we tend to say it’s from our hard work. Because we do experience all of the hard work. We show up early every day, go into the office, do all this stuff, and we want to attribute that success to ourselves. You almost don’t want to recognise that there’s a spiritual invisible hand at work. But it’s the Barakah effect that moves things and arranges things for you.”

We need the concept of Barakah to also hit the field of AI and other technologies in order to help build humanity instead of trying to destroying it.

Every girl’s dilemma.

Huffington Post describes one young girls dilemma with AI generated nude content:

One 15-year-old girl revealed a stranger had made fake nude images of her and she was worried about them being sent to her parents.

“It looks so real, it’s my face and my room in the background. They must have taken the pictures from my Instagram and edited them,” she told the charity.

“I’m so scared they will send them to my parents, the pictures are really convincing, and I don’t think they’d believe me that they’re fake.”

Just one of many thousands of horror stories.

Five “Fahadx” observations I made when at the hospital.

Baby girl got sick again this past week, making a total of 8 days at the hospital over a one month period. A few observations I noticed:

1. Almost every healthcare worker wears an Apple Watch.

2. This particular Modular Compact configuration with no bottom widget is more common than I would like.

3. The chapel is occupied by Muslims 99% of the time.

4. Sushi is great, and cheap. You can literally park at the hospital and get cheaper sushi at the cafeteria than the grocery store.

5. Masimo blood oxygen sensors are a real thing. A wrap-around for the foot, using the big toe as the sensing point. Thank you Masimo - now please (Apple and Masimo), make a deal and give us proper Apple Watch blood oxygen capability.

I “accidentally” bought an iPhone Pocket.

Disclaimer: Inspired by true events..near the end of November 2025.

My wife wanted to go visit her brother who just had a baby, and it’s quite a hike from Charlottesville, Virginia all the way to Paterson, New Jersey. I had to come back two days later for work, but we still managed to make a quick trip to New York City, four years after our last one. A great way to spend time with the wife and kids.

The trip was a selfless trip, all about them…

We’ve gone to the city many times, so it was my idea to try something different, a place more cultured, more “boutique,” with a different but still authentically New York City experience.

“Let’s go to SoHo.” I said. Plenty of things to see on the way there, and plenty of spots to get quick bites to eat. A little bit of Belgian fries with powdered parmesan, some Yemeni coffee, great architecture, and cobblestone streets that would bring tears of agony to any Ferrari owner. A world of cultures densely packed in one place.

A new experience for the kids with more cultural exposure. I’m serious…

A lot of the fun is just driving around in NYC, seeing how people interact, and how traffic rules gradually mean nothing the deeper you get inside. The craziest thing we saw before we even parked the car? A well-dressed man in hot pink wearing what looked like a beachcomber straw hat, wrestling with his dog who was upside-down, full monty view of its junk, all to try and tighten his dog vest so he doesn’t get cold.

Aaah, New York City.

For our family of six, the real challenge was walking, since the sidewalks are crowded, barely wide enough for a stroller, and one wrong step on an uneven sidewalk (a hallmark feature of NYC) could smash your head down a set of stairs right into an Italian bakery, no mob activity required.

Challenge #2 - finding a bathroom. It’s already impossible to find a bathroom in the city, but I heard you can go to an Apple Store and use the bathroom without being harassed to buy something. Perfect for the little ones. There happens to be an Apple Store in SoHo not too far from us, so we headed there to freshen up.

Wow what are the odds that there happens to be an Apple Store nearby? Crazy…

I was getting a sip of ice water from my Journey water bottle while standing near the iPhone booth, when my daughter bumped into me as she was making a beeline towards an iPad Pro. She jostled me enough to make me spill ice water all over my shirt and shoe. It’s one of those sneakers with perforated holes, so my sock was soaked.

It was a shock to my system as the iced part of my shirt velcroed itself to my chest, throwing off my reflexes. A cold shiver down my spine and drenched sock sent my brain into a frenzy and made me scream in horror.

It was like a scene from a Michael Jackson music video. I’m screaming, twitching from all the cold and shaking my leg, screaming:

“Oh my God it’s icey!”

“My yucky sock!”

Several of the Apple employees heard me, and well, they quickly rushed away which made me feel uncomfortable and self-conscious all of a sudden. Nobody else really batted an eye, because after all, it’s New York City.

I’m thinking those employees went to get a mop to clean up the mess, but they ended up coming back with an iPhone Pocket. I asked them, why did you bring me this?

“Well we thought you were so excited for the ISSEY MIYAKE sock* so we got you the last one in stock,” said the Specialist.

They mistook my expressions the wrong way.

“Umm, no” I said. “I was just expressing my feelings about how icey I felt, and how yucky my sock feels.”

Apparently the, “OMG it’s icey! My yucky sock!” sounds a lot like, “OMG it’s ISSEY MIYAKE sock!”

Still shivering from the wetness all over my torso, I grabbed my phone to call my wife so she can supervise the kids while I go clean myself up in the bathroom. My hand was shivering, and my quivering thumb accidentally tapped the Power Button twice instead of once activating Apple Pay. The employee with the iPhone Pocket noticed my Apple Pay screen, and tapped her little iPhone kiosk gizmo to my iPhone Air, completing the transaction.

Everything happened so fast…I don’t know if I got high off some weed fumes as we made our way to the Apple Store, but I was now the owner of an iPhone Pocket. Before I “accidentally” spend more money, I decided it was best to leave now that we have 5 empty bladders and a clean diaper.

In retrospect, it’s kind of crazy how I happened to end up in the only store in the USA that was selling the ISSEY MIYAKE iPhone Pocket, and they had it in stock.

TOTALLY didn’t expect that to happen.

---

*Actually how the events played out - I made a reservation that morning while in New Jersey and they had a few colors in stock at SoHo. Went there like a normal person (with family) and I said, “I’m here to pick up my iPhone Pocket.”

“Oh, we call it the sock,” said the employee.

No drama, no flair, but the Belgian fries and Yemeni coffee were real.

So was the man in hot pink.

It was a symbiotic affair where everyone in the family got something out of the trip.

Honda’s futuristic new logo will be for all future vehicles and not just EVs and hybrids.

Car and Driver:

While this isn't our first time seeing Honda's new emblem, it's the first time we're hearing that it will appear on all future models, not just the electric ones. Today, the automaker's European media team announced that the new "H mark" will gradually expand across its automobile lineup, starting in 2027 with its EVs and major hybrid models. Honda also said that the new logo will appear in other parts of its vast business, from dealerships to motorsports and more.

Looks like a futuristic logo since it was originally for EV and hybrid vehicles, but it really is a throwback to their original logo (via creative bloq).

It was an obvious move to make their logo uniform everywhere, especially now that most automakers are backpedaling on EV adoption.

These type of people are incompetent.

Hot take:

If you’re the type of person whose phone is always about to die, you’re incompetent for two reasons:

1. You use your phone too much and probably are wasting a lot of time.

2. You’re too lazy and are not forward thinking enough to make sure your phone is available to accomplish real goals.

Google Gemini will power Apple’s next gen version of Siri.

Joe Rossignol via MacRumors:

In a statement shared with CNBC today, Apple confirmed that Google Gemini will power the next-generation version of Siri that is slated to launch later this year.

"After careful evaluation, we determined that Google's technology provides the most capable foundation for Apple Foundation Models and we're excited about the innovative new experiences it will unlock for our users," the statement said.

The report explicitly mentioned that Google Gemini will power Siri, as was expected. Apple's decision to lean on Google's artificial intelligence technology should result in the revamped Siri being more capable and advanced than it otherwise would have been, as Gemini's large language model is significantly larger than Apple's own model.

I’m glad I went with Google Gemini over ChatGPT. It just makes more sense since Google has much more data points to learn from and make their AI platform more robust than the competition. Apple doesn’t have to be the best at everything - they just need to have the best implementation, even if that means using other companies’ products and services.

Why isn’t this electrical circuit disabled on the iPad’s Magic Keyboard?

Apple’s website says (in small font):

The USB-C port on Magic Keyboard provides power, but it doesn't transmit data. This means you can't use this port with an input device such as a USB-C mouse. Never connect one end of a USB-C cable to the USB-C port on your iPad and the other end to the USB-C port on your Magic Keyboard.

Naturally, the moment I read this, I had to try it. My battery did jump up from 44% to 45%, but it was an internal battery cycling error since the keyboard itself doesn’t have a battery. The iPad did start to heat up a little, but I’m surprised this function isn’t disabled. It really does give normal people the impression that the keyboard can charge your device, only to drain it faster than usual.

No, not infinite battery life. Notice the charging logo.

OpenAI releases ChatGPT Health.

OpenAI:

Today, health information is often scattered across portals, apps, wearables, PDFs, and medical notes—so it's hard to see the full picture, and people are left to navigate a complex healthcare system on their own. People have shared countless stories of turning to ChatGPT to help make sense of it all. In fact, health is one of the most common ways people use ChatGPT today: based on our de-identified analysis of conversations, over 230 million people globally ask health and wellness related questions on ChatGPT every week.

ChatGPT Health builds on this so responses are informed by your health information and context. You can now securely connect medical records and wellness apps—like Apple Health, Function, and MyFitnessPal—so ChatGPT can help you understand recent test results, prepare for appointments with your doctor, get advice on how to approach your diet and workout routine, or understand the tradeoffs of different insurance options based on your healthcare patterns.

Health is designed to support, not replace, medical care. It is not intended for diagnosis or treatment. Instead, it helps you navigate everyday questions and understand patterns over time—not just moments of illness—so you can feel more informed and prepared for important medical conversations. To keep your health information protected and secure, Health operates as a separate space with enhanced privacy to protect sensitive data. Conversations in Health are not used to train our foundation models. If you start a health-related conversation in ChatGPT, we’ll suggest moving into Health for these additional protections.

Sounds promising, and makes me think their first hardware device will be a wearable of some sort that also gathers health data.

Grok’s ability to sexualize women - are we really surprised?

Sex sells.

Any publicity is good publicity.

Whether it’s right or wrong, it doesn’t matter to many people.

It’s funny because I go out of my way to blur women, but here we are now where all kinds of women, even hijabis are being exposed with AI.

From Reddit:

there has been an increase in people misusing AI tools to turn hijabi women pics into harmful images and spreading them online without consent.

you have a bunch of guys asking Grok things like "put her in a bikini", "turn her around", "make her touch her toes while turned around"

Muslim woman if you are reading this and share your images online, you might want to check out what's happening in X because images shared online are no longer in your possession and people can do with them as they like

This one video of this known hijabi went viral and it's fully extreme NSFW, published on Corn sites.

Please be cautious with public photos May Allah protect us all.😧

Unfortunate of course, but not surprising. I mentioned this over a year ago in my other blog when discussing about “undressing” websites:

This is another reason why women and girls in general, shouldn’t post their photos online. The fitna is already there even if the photos aren’t sexualized, but this is a whole other level of just destroying a girls reputation. 

Imagine if this became rampant in the Muslim community? It would just be a huge mess, with families’ reputations being tarnished and girls being slandered against left and right. Imagine a high school or middle school boy liking a muslim girl in school, and trying this feature on her. She may not even be one who posts photos online and might not even be involved in social media, but anyone can just take your photo these days and do whatever they want with it. 

What phone fasting can do for you.

Via Kottke.org (photo removed version of article here)

A group of students at a New Mexico college (mostly) gave up their phones & computers for a week. What did they learn? “Most students said they had gotten to know themselves better without their phones butting in all day long.”

There’s no doubt “phone fasting” has its benefits, even though it’s really impossible today with many services being digitized with no alternative, such as student laundry machines that run on an app.

I noticed the same thing when I used to do prison dawah. Inmates were not on drugs or alcohol, and the mental clarity is what allowed them to think and let their fitra lead them to the straight path.

It’s crazy that we spend so much of our time looking down at our devices, when Allah subhana wata'aalah constantly reminds us to look up at the sky to witness His signs:

Have they not then looked at the sky above them: how We built it and adorned it ˹with stars˺, leaving it flawless?

Surah Qaf (50:6)

Apple’s “Can’t Decide” video plateaus at 79 million views.

I was tracking the view count sporadically the past 2 months:

11/10- 50 million

11/12- 52 million

11/13- 53 million

11/16 - 57 million

11/23 - 64 million

11/28 - 67 million

12/1 - 70 million

12/2 - 71 million

12/4 - 72 million

12/6 - 74 million

12/7 - 75 million

12/14 - 79 million

Still at 79 million on 1/8/26.