Bytes: Week in Review — Apple unveils iPhone Air, researchers allege Meta suppressed child online safety research, and Waymo gets competition

Marketplace Tech

American Public Media

Technology, News

4.6 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 12 September 2025

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Marketplace’s Nova Safo spoke with Joanna Stern, senior personal technology columnist at the Wall Street Journal, to discuss all these topics and more. This episode was produced by Jesús Alvarado.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Apple's newest and thinnest iPhone yet.
0:04.8	From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech.
0:07.6	I'm Novosafo.
0:18.0	It's our TechBites week in review episode, and we're looking at the increasing competition in
0:22.9	Robotaxis, the field expanded in Vegas and Atlanta this week. Also, more congressional testimony
0:28.3	from new meta-whistleblowers. They claim the tech giant manipulated and suppressed research
0:33.7	about child online safety. But we begin with the big personal tech news of the week,
0:39.1	Apple's annual ritual where we get new iPhones and other products. The company unveiled the iPhone
0:44.6	17 and a new subcategory, the iPhone Air, thinner and lighter. I asked Joanna Stern if consumers
0:52.6	are actually clamoring for this.
0:55.0	She's a senior personal tech columnist at the Wall Street Journal.
0:58.2	I do think there is a want for a lighter smartphone, right?
1:01.6	Our phones have gotten pretty bulky.
1:03.1	The batteries have gotten bigger.
1:04.7	There's more cameras on the back.
1:06.5	And so this is, I think, Apple's effort to say, hey, we can still engineer some really amazing
1:12.3	thin iPhone. Is it the most practical iPhone? No, but it's here for people that want the
1:19.5	coolest, sleekest iPhone ever. And why is it not the most practical? Well, look, there are going to be clear compromises as always for thinness.
1:30.7	That is the long history of technology and thin technology.
1:34.1	So is that compromise coming yet in some battery life?
1:37.0	Clearly, Apple is hedging there by saying, look, we've got this new adaptive technology,
1:41.7	this adaptive battery software, which is going to make the battery life better.
	...

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