News

Apple’s iPhone 17 Launch: Air, Pro, AirPods Pro 3, And More

Apple’s September event unveiled iPhone 17, iPhone Air, Pro models, AirPods Pro 3, and new Apple Watches. Pre-orders open September 12.

Published

1 year ago

September 9, 2025

Joanna Melki

Apple’s September showcase delivered the expected iPhone refresh — and a few surprises. The headline was the new iPhone Air, joined by the iPhone 17 and 17 Pro ranges, updated Apple Watches, and the AirPods Pro 3. All products land later this month, with pre-orders opening Friday, September 12.

iPhone 17

apple iphone 17 colors

The standard iPhone 17 line gets a 6.3-inch, 120Hz display with slimmer bezels and Ceramic Shield 2, which is now three times more scratch-resistant.

The A19 chip brings a six-core CPU, five-core GPU and upgraded neural engine. Apple claims it’s faster, more efficient, and stretches battery life by up to eight hours.

The rear system pairs a 48MP Fusion main camera with a 12MP telephoto, while the new square-sensor front camera improves stabilization and removes the need to rotate for landscape shots.

Pricing starts at $799 (256GB).

iPhone Air

The thinnest iPhone to date, the 5.6mm iPhone Air uses a titanium frame with Ceramic Shield 2 on both sides. The 6.5-inch always-on display supports ProMotion and peaks at 3,000 nits.

It runs on the A19 Pro chip and Apple’s new N1 wireless silicon, adding Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, alongside a faster C1X modem. Despite a slim design, it carries a dual-lens setup hidden behind a single housing: 48MP Fusion plus 12MP telephoto.

Adaptive Power Mode manages use patterns for longer runtimes, though Apple still frames it as an “all-day” battery. Apple has also built a thinner MagSafe pack to match.

Launch price: $999 (256GB).

iPhone 17 Pro

The 17 Pro is pitched as Apple’s most powerful iPhone to date, introducing an anodized aluminum unibody, a vapor-chamber cooling system and the largest iPhone battery so far.

The camera array sits on a raised “plateau” and includes a 48MP telephoto (up to 8x optical-quality zoom), plus 48MP wide and ultra-wide sensors. The front “center stage” camera jumps to 18MP. Display sizes are 6.3-inch (Pro) and 6.9-inch (Pro Max), both using Ceramic Shield 2. Battery life stretches to 39 hours of video playback on the Pro Max.

Pricing starts at $1,099 (256GB).

AirPods Pro 3

The third-gen AirPods Pro add heart-rate tracking, improved active noise cancellation (four times stronger than the original), foam-infused ear tips and spatial audio refinements. A headline feature is live translation, triggered by a new gesture and powered by Apple Intelligence. Battery life is rated at eight hours.

Available now for $249.

Apple Watch Series 11, Ultra 3 And SE

Series 11: Slimmer, more durable, 5G-enabled and with hypertension alerts via improved sensors. Battery life extends to 24 hours. From $399.
Ultra 3: Larger LTPO 3 display, satellite connectivity and Emergency SOS. From $799.
Watch SE: Gains always-on display, optional 5G and new gestures. Adds Sleep Score and sleep apnea alerts but keeps an 18-hour battery. From $249.

Availability

Pre-orders for all major devices open Friday, September 12, with general availability on September 19.

News

ESET Bets On Specialized Security AI At 0.5% The Training Cost

ESET says NeoCortex can estimate an attacker’s next move, with a kill switch and human oversight built in to keep it from going rogue.

Published

5 days ago

November 4, 2026

Dana Saadeh

eset bets on specialized security ai at 0.5% the training cost

A sign-in anomaly, a suspicious process launch and an unusual connection may look harmless alone. Together, they can describe an intrusion that is hard for security to teams to piece together.

To solve that problem, ESET announced ESET NeoCortex on November 4, 2026: a specialized foundational AI model for cybersecurity. It powers ESET LiveCortex, available within the ESET PROTECT Platform, which connects fragmented security signals and turns them into actionable incidents.

Filtering is the main selling point, with LiveCortex processing billions of raw telemetry events daily, and just 0.00111% of them contributing to incidents presented to customers. The aim is less alert fatigue and more analyst time spent on threats that matter.

NeoCortex is built on world-model architecture, learning how digital environments behave and how events relate. ESET says that lets it reconstruct missing incident context, recognize similar past cases and estimate an attacker’s likely next step – what the company calls “minus-one-day defense,” a chance to intervene before the next stage unfolds. ESET points to Black October, the week leading up to October 25, 2026, when critical security issues affecting PHP, Linux, GitLab and other key systems demanded rapid, prioritized responses, as the kind of moment where that context matters.

ESET’s internal research also suggests a specialized model like NeoCortex can be trained at up to 200 times lower cost than a large general reasoning model, while delivering more accurate, defense-focused results. The company credits optimized training, a focus on cybersecurity vocabulary, lower computing requirements and privately owned hardware.

Also Read: Dubai Says Its Deepfake Detector Needs Just 7 Seconds Of Video

“AI is accelerating both cyberattacks and cyberdefenses. With ESET NeoCortex, we are applying our AI investment to develop specialized foundational cybersecurity intelligence that remains under our control and strengthens, rather than replaces, human expertise,” said Juraj Malcho, Chief Technology Officer at ESET.

As part of the design, NeoCortex forms part of a layered architecture combining specialized models, deterministic controls, correlation logic, validation, auditability and expert human oversight. Safeguards include restricted sandboxes, read-only tools, continuous monitoring, defined usage and token limits, a kill switch and human oversight of critical response decisions. The model is also developed and self-hosted on ESET’s own infrastructure, which the company says reduces exposure to shifts among third-party AI providers, including commercial and geopolitical ones.