Apple says Siri AI won't suck up to you, Textiles that can produce drinking water from the air, and the Trump phone is practically the same as an HTC handset

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. That's indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:37)
Apple says Siri AI will not suck up to you.
Researchers are developing textiles that can produce drinking water from the air.
And a teardown of the Trump phone found it's practically the same as an HTC handset.
It's Friday, June 12th, and here's a quick look at some of the news happening in and around Tech This Morning from Engadget.
Well, according to Apple's SVP of Engineering, Craig Federighi, Siri AI will fend off users' attempts at romancing it. As Mac Rumors has reported, Federighi clarified that the upgraded Siri for iOS 27 will not suck up to you like other AIs. He said, Quite the opposite, because as you may know, if you use many of the existing chatbots, they're really focused on engagement to a large degree. And sick of fancy, right? They kind of want to pull you in. He added that other AIs might encourage users to reveal more about themselves, and then use that information to establish a connection. Apple, however, designed Siri to put up and maintain boundaries, so to speak. Siri really wants to say, Listen, that's not what I'm here for, right? I'm here to help you. I can help you get things done. Apple Marketing Chief Greg Joswiak added that, Apple likes for the technology behind its features to disappear into the background, so that its users can just focus on what they want to do or focus on the content itself. The company does not want or need its users to become prompt experts to get the most out of Siri, saying, we want to meet them where they're at, have the products and features become better. This is just a really helpful technology in making those features and products better. It took nearly two years of delays before Apple officially introduced the new Gemini-powered Siri that it introduced at WWDC back in 2024 The new Siri will be more deeply integrated into Apple's mobile platform, as well as its apps, including camera and photos. It can search the web, understand on-screen context, and take users' personal information into account to complete various tasks. Apple will also release a dedicated Siri app to compete with chat bots like ChatGPT and Claude, allowing users to talk to the assistant through text and voice.
There are existing methods to collect water from the ambient air, but most of them are large or cumbersome. Recent research by the University of Texas is taking that concept and transforming it into something you could have on hand at all times, or, more literally, on your back at all times. In a study published in Scientific Advances, the team used a special textile to create a jacket capable of atmospheric water harvesting. The jacket used a special fabric designed to collect moisture from the air and gather it in detachable harvesting units, rather than simply having the textile absorb the water. Heath Johnston, a co-author of the study, said, that transport design is what allows the material to work not just in a small lab test, but in a wearable system. The harvesters are then placed in a foldable collector piece and heated to produce drinkable water. Depending on humidity levels, the jacket produced between 14 to 30 ounces of drinkable water per day in testing. The form factor created for this particular study was a jacket, but the investigators suggested that the same textile could be used to manufacture other objects such as a backpack or a tent to lend them water collecting capabilities. The technology could have applications for medical response teams or during emergencies particularly in remote places. On the commercial side, it could also make for some pretty useful hiking and extreme sports gear.
A teardown of the Trump Mobile T1 revealed that it's basically the same as an HTC handset. After looking at the guts of the Trump phone, iFixit, which got its hands on a unit first procured by NBC News, concluded it's practically identical to the HTC U24 Pro. The only real differences are a battery with a slightly larger capacity and that gaudy gold paint. Otherwise, there are some very minor cosmetic changes, like different positioning for the camera array and an alternate pattern of holes for the speaker. The chipset with the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 12 GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage is fundamentally the same, though the board housing in the Trump phone is from Micron, while the U24 Pro has one from SK Hynix. Trump Mobile, which initially claimed the T1 was made in the USA, insists the device has American proud design, whatever that's supposed to mean. It claims the T1 is shaped by American innovation and was designed with American values in mind. While the phone may be proudly American, it certainly was not made in the US. The pipeline to make all of the components for the phone entirely in the US does not exist as things stand. Trump Mobile now says the T1 is proudly assembled in the US, suggesting that a team in the country is responsible for putting together around 10 components. The $499 Trump Phone's battery is made in the Philippines, but most of the components are from China. Looking at all the evidence, iFixit posits that the only piece the T1 could have made in the very short time the brand has existed in the limited quantities it's being produced, and at the same price point as the U24 Pro, is at the factories with pre-existing tooling and production lines for this phone. It concluded the T1 is a phone designed in China, made in China, with the vast majority of parts sourced from China.