A Flying Start 🚗🍏

👀 TLDR

In this week’s What’s Appening, we cover the incredible success of the Apple iPhone Duo, which sold out within minutes of pre-order and won’t be available again until next year. With touchscreen MacBook Pros on the horizon, too, it looks like a flying start for new CEO John Ternus. Speaking of flying, Tesla gives us a glimpse of a “flying” car, which divided opinion but looked pretty impressive to us. We also look at people using AI to create “dumb” TVs, another big outage that hit Europe, an AI tool that can predict cancer survival rates from a selfie, and much more.

🎬 Our Top Take

📱⏩ Apple – A Great Start for John Ternus as iPhone Duo Sells Out in Minutes

As Apple CEO, Tim Cook was always praised for his business acumen, if not his commitment to innovation. As for his successor, John Ternus, we were told he is a product guy, more likely to oversee the engineering and design corps than worry about Wall Street. That said, Ternus has had his first big success, with the new iPhone Duo selling out within minutes; not bad when you consider the hefty $1,999 price point. New devices will not be available until 2027. There’s more good news for Apple hardware fans, too, as a special launch event on October 28 is set to unveil the first-ever touchscreen MacBook Pros. Apple is calling the event “Pro and Tell,” which gets 7/10 on our pun rating. Still, this feels like a good start for Ternus's early tenure, and as we touched on a couple of weeks back, the foldable iPhone Duo and touchscreen MacBooks give app developers something interesting to work with, potentially unleashing a new wave of exciting applications for the Apple ecosystem. #SoldOut. Read more here.

📲 App of the Week: Yelp

Download the Yelp app? Wait, it’s not 2010 anymore. However, the business discovery app has a few tricks up its sleeve to make it relevant in 2026, not least its new AI personal assistant. Most notably, there is the Check For Me feature, which can ring up a restaurant – or similar business – on your behalf to check for stuff like wait times. We are really keen to keep an eye on how apps like this get a new lease of life with AI tools, and think Yelp is a great example. Download it here for iOS and here for Android.

🧐 Stat of the Week: 3 Seconds

📈📉 Tesla – Flying Roadster Stunt Draws Praise (and Memes)

Well, you’ve got to hand it to Elon Musk and his team. The recent unveiling of the flying Tesla Roadster was incredibly impressive. Yes, we know some pedants have pointed out that it was more of an elaborate jump than a car actually flying, but it was pretty cool to see a company attempt it, even if it was airborne for just three seconds or so. This felt like vintage Elon Musk, and we reckon Tesla investors probably prefer this version to the constantly tweeting one. #FlyingCars Read more here.

🗞️ Other Stories

📍 Meanwhile at 3Advance

The Apple App Store is now receiving submissions from developers for new apps designed to work on the foldable screen of the iPhone Duo. We are excited to see what app creators come up with. And if any of you have an idea for an app for a foldable phone (or a non-foldable one, for that matter), why not drop us a line? Even if it’s a rough idea or basic concept, we can take you through some of the steps to help make it a reality.