Technology

• Reputable analyst Mark Gurman predicts the iPhone 17 Air won't be a big hit
• Leaks support this theory, with major spec compromises and a not especially thin design being tipped
• Gurman suggests a foldable iPhone could prove much more popular

In recent years Apple has tried to expand its iPhone line with new models like the mini and Plus, and so far these models haven’t been especially successful, at least by iPhone standards. Apple’s next attempt at an alternative iPhone could be the rumored iPhone 17 Air, but a reputable analyst predicts this won’t fare any better.

In his latest subscriber-only newsletter for Bloomberg (via Phone Arena) Mark Gurman has predicted that “the 'iPhone Air' will suffer the same fate as the mini and Plus lines.”

Gurman argues that with this rumored slimmed-down phone, Apple is attempting to replicate the success it found with the MacBook Air, with the iPhone Air positioned as “a mid-tier offering at a great price, for people who don’t need the most impressive specifications.”

However, Gurman doesn’t think this strategy will work as well with phones as with laptops, and while he doesn’t say why, there are some obvious potential issues.

Too many compromises for too little gain

The iPhone 16 is already quite a slim phone (Image credit: Future)

For one thing, the iPhone 17 Air's key selling point is expected to be a slimmer and probably also lighter build than current iPhones, but phones – even large ones like the iPhone 16 Pro Max – aren’t massive, heavy things in the first place, so slimming them down will have less impact than it does with a laptop.

And going by leaks, the iPhone 17 Air might not actually be as slim as Apple hoped anyway, while the spec compromises – including rumors of just one camera on the back of the iPhone 17 Air – could be big enough to put people off.

So what can Apple do? Well, in Gurman’s view “the only alternative iPhone that will sell well is a foldable model.” That would make sense – a foldable iPhone is a radically different proposition to any current models, and would probably slot in above even the Pro Max phones, which currently tend to be the most popular.

We might not be waiting too much longer for a foldable iPhone either, as while leakers disagree about if or when such a device will launch, the most recent claim we’ve heard is that the foldable iPhone could land in 2025. In which case, we could soon see whether that or the iPhone 17 Air proves the more popular new kind of iPhone.

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IT downtime costs businesses over £300 billion annually. 2024 alone has proven that organizations are deeply vulnerable to IT outages, which resulted in widespread disruptions in sectors including healthcare, aviation and banking. However, these critical services cannot afford a single minute of downtime as this significantly impacts emergency services and the business’s bottom line.

These disruptions have exposed the risk of complex digital environments and the vulnerabilities existing within many companies’ IT infrastructure. As such, organizations should explore prevention strategies and impact mitigation to safeguard their business. By addressing cybersecurity breaches within hybrid cloud environments and implementing contingency measures, CIOs can strengthen resilience against potential IT outages. Here are four strategies that CIOs should consider.

Evaluate existing infrastructure

To effectively prepare against future service outages, CIOs must first look within - to gain a better understanding of their weaknesses and bottlenecks. This assessment of their existing infrastructure should include an extensive audit of all legacy systems, interdependencies and business continuity planning.

Once they have a holistic view of their existing infrastructure, CIOs can make the necessary changes to their mission-critical systems. Attention should be given to those areas most vulnerable to potential outages or those that would cause the most damage to data security and operations should they be offline.

A key part of this evaluation process should be testing backup systems and failover mechanisms crucial for business continuity when IT disruptions occur. Reducing downtime and keeping services online will be a priority for any CIO amidst unexpected outages.

Adopt bespoke cloud solutions

Cloud-based solutions improve resilience against outages, vital for organizations handling sensitive data. CIOs should seek to unlock the potential of hybrid cloud and combine the scalability and cost-efficiency of public clouds with the enhanced security and risk mitigation capabilities of private infrastructure.

The global hybrid cloud market size was valued at $73.5 billion in 2023 – and is projected to reach $210.4 billion by 2032 so it’s unsurprising that organizations are adopting a hybrid cloud approach to further enhance resilience. A hybrid cloud approach provides a robust and flexible IT environment which backs up legacy systems and spreads workloads between several cloud providers to limit their reliance on a single point of failure. However, when moving to the public cloud, CIOs must consider data sovereignty to comply with local regulations, for example, selecting a provider that complies with GDPR in the UK or the CPPA in the US.

For this to be successful, employees need the necessary training to work across multiple cloud computing providers so critical operations can continue uninterrupted through other cloud platforms.

Reduce security vulnerabilities

Alongside adopting cloud solutions that enhance resilience against outages, CIOs should frequently update systems to protect themselves against service disruptions. Recent outages have demonstrated that not all businesses are testing and implementing these patches as carefully as they should, so it’s crucial to ensure being top of patch management to mitigate the threat of cyber vulnerabilities.

To increase their threat detection, CIOs need to strengthen their cyber intelligence, security analytics, alerts and response services. A key stage in this process is monitoring and analyzing vast quantities of traffic and events in real time.

CIOs should also have an incident response plan to combat multi-cloud vulnerabilities. With the appropriate planning, procedures, controls and cloud-specific response policies, they can limit the potential issues caused by security breaches and ensure a quick recovery after incidents occur.

Build a skilled IT workforce

Communication gaps between IT security teams and senior corporate leaders can create significant gaps in application and broader service security. This is proof that CIOs can’t prepare their organizations for IT outages alone. Successful outage prevention and recovery relies on a workforce that is technologically competent and has the skills needed to work together towards resilience strategies.

To achieve this, CIOs must take responsibility for building a skilled workforce that can help to manage complex, multi-cloud environments. Building this team of experts requires a detailed training program covering crucial areas like cloud management, cyber and resilience planning combined with disaster recovery.

CIOs also need to ensure departments within their organization are collaborating to improve each other’s understanding of their unique operational needs. CIOs should be running simulations and test scenarios which consider the wider context such as the consequences of outages on each team’s functional capacity. And they should be communicating with all stakeholders so that everyone – internally or externally – is aware of what’s happening within the business.

Leading the way in network outage prevention

At a time when organizations are regularly experiencing IT outages, it’s more essential than ever for CIOs to evaluate their organization's IT infrastructure and cyber vulnerabilities both for the ‘as-is’ landscape but also any software and infrastructure change program impacts. Once they have a holistic view of the gaps that need to be filled, they can unlock the benefits of cloud-based solutions and coordinate their team to mitigate the threat of disruption. If they don’t follow these steps, they could be opening the door to future significant business impact.

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This article was produced as part of TechRadarPro's Expert Insights channel where we feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today. The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/news/submit-your-story-to-techradar-pro

If you're not earning interest in a high-yield savings account, you're missing out.

As the Artificial Intelligence (AI) industry continues to mature, it necessitates the development of robust infrastructure to train models and deliver services – greatly impacting data storage and management. This has significant implications for the amount of data generated and most importantly, how and where to store this insight.

The ability to manage this data efficiently is becoming critical as data requirements increase exponentially due to the continuous growth and development of AI tools. Therefore, the storage infrastructure needed to support these systems must be able to scale in parallel with the rapid advancements in AI applications and capabilities.

With AI creating new data and making existing data even more valuable, a cycle quickly emerges, where increased data generation leads to expanded storage needs. This fuels further data generation – forming a "virtuous AI data cycle" which drives AI development forward. To fully leverage AI’s potential, organizations must not only grasp this cycle, but fully understand its implications for infrastructure and resource management.

A six stage AI data cycle

The AI Data Cycle consists of a six-stage framework designed to streamline data handling and storage. The first stage is focused on collecting existing raw data and storage. Data here is collected and stored from various sources, and the analysis of the quality and diversity of collected data is critical – setting the base for the next stages. For this stage of the cycle, capacity enterprise hard disk drives (eHDDs) are recommended, as they deliver the highest capacity per drive and lowest cost per bit.

The next stage is where data is prepared for intake and the evaluation from the previous stage is administered, prepared and transformed for training purposes. To accommodate this stage, datacentres are applying upgraded storage infrastructure – like fast data lakes – to support data for preparation and intake. Here, high-capacity SSDs are needed to enhance existing HDD storage or to create new all-flash storage systems. This ensures swift access to organised and prepared data.

Then comes the next phase of training of AI models to make accurate projections with training data. This phase typically occurs on high-performance supercomputers – requiring specific and high-performance storage solutions to operate as effectively as possible. Here, high-bandwidth flash storage and low-latency enhanced eSSDs are created to meet the specific needs of this stage, providing necessary speed and precision.

Next, following training, the inference and prompting stage focuses on the creation of a user-friendly interface for AI models. This stage incorporates the use of an application programming interface (API), dashboards and tools that combine context to specific data with end-user prompts. Then, AI models will integrate into internet and client applications without needing to interchange current systems. This means that maintaining current systems alongside new AI computing will require further storage.

Here, larger and faster SSDs are essential for AI upgrades in computers, and higher-capacity embedded flash devices are needed for smartphones and IoT systems to maintain seamless functionality in real-world applications.

The AI inference engine stage follows, where trained models are positioned into production environments to perform the examination of new data, produce new content or provide real-time predictions. At this stage, the engine’s level of efficiency is critical in achieving quick and accurate AI responses. Therefore, to ensure a comprehensive data analysis, significant storage performance is essential. To support this stage, high-capacity SSDs can be used for streaming or to model data into inference servers based on scale or response time needs, while high-performance SSDs can be used for caching.

The final stage is where the new content is created, with insights produced by AI models and then stored. This stage completes the data cycle, by continually enhancing data value for future model training and analysis. The generated content will be stored away on enterprise hard drives for datacenter archive purposes and in both high-capacity SSDs and embedded flash devices for AI edge devices, making it readily available for future analysis.

A self-sustaining data generation cycle

By fully understanding the six stages of the AI data cycle and employing the right storage tools to support each phase, businesses can effectively sustain AI technology, streamline their internal operations, and maximize the benefits of their AI investment.

Today’s AI applications use data to produce text, video, images and various other forms of interesting content. This continuous loop of data consumption and generation accelerates the need for performance-driven and scalable storage technologies for managing large AI datasets and re-factoring complex data efficiently, driving further innovation.

The demand for appropriate storage solutions will significantly increase in time as the role of AI across operations becomes even more prevalent and integral. As a result, the access to data, the efficiency and accuracy of AI models, and larger, higher-quality datasets will also become increasingly important. Additionally, as AI becomes embedded across nearly every industry, partners and customers can expect to see storage component providers tailor their products so that there is an appropriate solution at each and every stage of the AI data cycle.

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This article was produced as part of TechRadarPro's Expert Insights channel where we feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today. The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/news/submit-your-story-to-techradar-pro

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for Nov. 25.

Here are some hints — and the answers — for Connections No. 533 for Nov. 25.

Here are some hints and the answer for Wordle No. 1,255 for Nov. 25.

Here are some hints -- and the answers -- for the Nov. 25 Strands puzzle, No. 267.

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Quordle was one of the original Wordle alternatives and is still going strong now more than 1,000 games later. It offers a genuine challenge, though, so read on if you need some Quordle hints today – or scroll down further for the answers.

Enjoy playing word games? You can also check out my Wordle today, NYT Connections today and NYT Strands today pages for hints and answers for those puzzles.

SPOILER WARNING: Information about Quordle today is below, so don't read on if you don't want to know the answers.

Quordle today (game #1036) - hint #1 - Vowels How many different vowels are in Quordle today?

• The number of different vowels in Quordle today is 4*.

* Note that by vowel we mean the five standard vowels (A, E, I, O, U), not Y (which is sometimes counted as a vowel too).

Quordle today (game #1036) - hint #2 - repeated letters Do any of today's Quordle answers contain repeated letters?

• The number of Quordle answers containing a repeated letter today is 2.

Quordle today (game #1036) - hint #3 - uncommon letters Do the letters Q, Z, X or J appear in Quordle today?

• No. None of Q, Z, X or J appear among today's Quordle answers.

Quordle today (game #1036) - hint #4 - starting letters (1) Do any of today's Quordle puzzles start with the same letter?

• The number of today's Quordle answers starting with the same letter is 2.

If you just want to know the answers at this stage, simply scroll down. If you're not ready yet then here's one more clue to make things a lot easier:

Quordle today (game #1036) - hint #5 - starting letters (2) What letters do today's Quordle answers start with?

• N

• S

• S

• D

Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE THEM.

Quordle today (game #1036) - the answers

(Image credit: Merriam-Webster)

The answers to today's Quordle, game #1036, are…

• NUDGE
• SNOOP
• SHACK
• DRYLY

DRYLY is the kind of word that crops up occasionally in Quordle or Wordle with the potential to cause all kinds of trouble, due to the fact that it contains no vowels. Or does it? Debate rages (in some, admittedly niche, circles) as to whether Y counts as a vowel or not. The answer is that it sometimes does and it sometimes doesn't. Here, it most definitely does, standing in for the 'I' sound in the middle and the 'E' sound at the end. However, I don't count Y as a vowel in my Quordle hints, because it would be far too confusing to do so.

DRYLY aside, today's game is not too difficult, but I did run it close having guessed SPOON when the answer was SNOOP. That aside, it was pretty approachable as Quordle goes.

How did you do today? Send me an email and let me know.

Daily Sequence today (game #1036) - the answers

(Image credit: New York Times)

The answers to today's Quordle Daily Sequence, game #1036, are…

• HOVER
• CROOK
• DUSTY
• SHALL

Quordle answers: The past 20

• Quordle #1035, Sunday 24 November: CLOTH, CLAMP, PETTY, CHEST
• Quordle #1034, Saturday 23 November: AVOID, PLANT, FILET, TWIRL
• Quordle #1033, Friday 22 November: CUTIE, ALOOF, ETUDE, SILLY
• Quordle #1032, Thursday 21 November: RABBI, EAGER, COUGH, BRASH
• Quordle #1031, Wednesday 20 November: MINTY, TOPAZ, BRUSH, LAPEL
• Quordle #1030, Tuesday 19 November: NINJA, PENCE, PAINT, FOIST
• Quordle #1029, Monday 18 November: ASCOT, BRINK, WEIRD, HOMER
• Quordle #1028, Sunday 17 November: STATE, BRAWN, SWORE, URBAN
• Quordle #1027, Saturday 16 November: NOTCH, BENCH, BUSED, FOUND
• Quordle #1026, Friday 15 November: PURER, TRUSS, TORCH, FORUM
• Quordle #1025, Thursday 14 November: EXALT, TASTE, CRONY, CLOUT
• Quordle #1024, Wednesday 13 November: YEARN, ELBOW, SURGE, PINEY
• Quordle #1023, Tuesday 12 November: CHORD, ATTIC, OLIVE, EIGHT
• Quordle #1022, Monday 11 November: COPSE, REGAL, GRUNT, GOODY
• Quordle #1021, Sunday 10 November: GROIN, FAULT, FERRY, SUITE
• Quordle #1020, Saturday 9 November: FLUME, THERE, ATOLL, SANER
• Quordle #1019, Friday 8 November: DELAY, NAVAL, MOLAR, SWARM
• Quordle #1018, Thursday 7 November: REPAY, SYNOD, LOATH, PITHY
• Quordle #1017, Wednesday 6 November: SASSY, DRUID, THREW, SLOSH
• Quordle #1016, Tuesday 5 November: BEGET, AMUSE, STONY, LOUSY

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• MSI launches two business laptops powered by Intel’s Core i7-13620H CPU
• Includes Microsoft Office 2024 and Microsoft 365 Basic software
• Both models have limited battery life

MSI has released two new business-oriented notebooks in Japan, the Modern 15 H B13M 5039JP and Modern 14 H D13MG 5029JP. These laptops, designed with productivity in mind, are powered by Intel’s Core i7-13620H.

Both models come pre-installed with Microsoft Office Home & Business 2024 and a year's subscription to Microsoft 365 Basic, giving business users access to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook, along with 100GB of OneDrive storage.

This offer is currently only available in Japan, and MSI isn’t the only company providing it; Dynabook has included the same software package with two of its new laptops, suggesting a possible trend. It’s certainly something we’d like to see rolled out globally.

Why Windows 11 Home?

The Modern 15 H B13M 5039JP offers a 15.6-inch full HD (1920 x 1080) non-glare LCD, 32GB of memory, a 512GB NVMe SSD, and runs Windows 11 Home.

Connectivity options include USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C with video output and USB PD compatibility, three USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports, HDMI, a 920,000-pixel webcam, an audio combo jack, Wi-Fi 6E, and Bluetooth 5.3. It measures 359 x 241 x 19.9 mm, weighs about 1.9 kg, and its 53.8Whr battery lasts just four hours during video playback (up to eight hours when idle), so you won’t want to stray too far from a power outlet.

The Modern 14 H D13MG 5029JP is the smaller counterpart, featuring a 14-inch WUXGA (1920 x 1200) non-glare LCD, with the same memory and storage configuration as the 15.6-inch model.

It includes Thunderbolt 4, three USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, a 920,000-pixel webcam, HDMI, an audio combo jack, Wi-Fi 6E, and Bluetooth 5.3. It measures 313.7 x 236 x 18.6 mm, weighs approximately 1.6 kg, and has the same battery but with a longer life - up to six hours during video playback and 14 hours when idle.

Interestingly, although Microsoft’s productivity software is included for free with these two laptops, they ship with Windows 11 Home. MSI recommends Windows 11 Pro for business, so it’s surprising the firm didn’t upgrade the default OS to suit the productivity package. Both laptops come In any color you like, so long as it’s Classic Black. No word on pricing or availability yet.

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