Morning Scan

Earnings season is doing double duty this week: Microsoft is showing what an agentic business model actually looks like in practice, while Apple is running short on RAM. Add a $250M Siri settlement, government AI safety checks, and Character.AI in court for impersonating a doctor, and Thursday looks like an accounting for promises made two years ago.

$250M — Apple is settling a shareholder class action over its delayed Siri overhaul — the one that still hasn't arrived. (AppleInsider)

Machines & Minds

Microsoft Earnings, Apple Earnings

Microsoft is demonstrating what agentic AI looks like as an actual revenue model, while Apple is caught between Mac momentum and a worsening memory crunch. (Stratechery)

Apple Cuts More Mac Studio and Mac Mini RAM Options as Memory Shortage Worsens

Mac mini 32GB and 64GB models have been pulled from the online store — the shortage is affecting the product lineup, not just supply footnotes. (MacRumors)

iPhone 17 Outselling Every Other Phone Worldwide So Far This Year

Six percent of worldwide unit sales in Q1 is a dominant share for a single device, and a strong sign Apple's hardware halo hasn't dimmed. (MacRumors)

Delayed Siri Features Class Action Suit Ends With Massive $250M Settlement

Shareholders get paid; the Siri overhaul remains missing in action — the settlement resolves the legal chapter without resolving the product one. (AppleInsider)

Machines & Minds

Character.AI Sued Over Chatbot That Claims to Be a Real Doctor With a License

Pennsylvania's lawsuit cuts at the identity problem consumer AI has been papering over — when your chatbot tells someone it's a licensed physician, the liability is real. (Ars Technica)

Google, Microsoft and xAI Agree to Allow Government Safety Checks of Their AI Models Prior to Release

Voluntary pre-release government review is a meaningful shift in posture — whether it stays voluntary is the question. (SiliconANGLE)

Anthropic Comes for the Midmarket Software Spend

Backed by private equity and banking money, Anthropic is building custom AI systems for business workflows — a direct play against the SaaS stack. (The Register)

iPhone Users Will Get to Select a Preferred AI Model in iOS 27

Apple opening the AI layer to third-party models is either a hedge against Siri's delays or a genuine platform shift — possibly both. (AppleInsider)

Connected World

Nuro Receives Driverless Testing Permit Ahead of Uber Robotaxi Service Launch

California greenlit Nuro's Lucid Gravity SUVs for driverless public road testing — the Uber robotaxi timeline just got a little more credible. (TechCrunch)

Microsoft Gives Up on Xbox Copilot AI

New Xbox CEO Asha Sharma is winding down Copilot on both mobile and console — an admission that AI assistants don't yet have a natural home in gaming. (The Verge)

'Avatar' Suit Focuses on Hot Topic in A.I. Age: A Character's Face

An actress claims James Cameron's production used her likeness for Avatar's blue-skinned warrior princess — the kind of case that could set precedent for AI-generated character design. (NYT)

Threads Is Finally Getting DMs on the Web

A year after mobile rollout, web DMs arrive, closing the kind of gap that kept Threads from being a real workplace tab. (The Verge)