Technologies

Get Ready, Apple’s iPhone 17 Event Confirmed for Sept. 9

Today’s Apple invitations tease an «Awe dropping» event. Here’s how to watch and what we expect to see.

Apple on Tuesday sent out invites for its annual fall iPhone launch event, which is slated for Sept. 9 at 10 a.m. PT. The company is expected to unveil the iPhone 17 lineup, which could include a slimmer version of the phone. It could also debut the Apple Watch Series 11 and the AirPods Pro 3.

The invite for the fall event shows the title, «Awe dropping,» with a glowing Apple logo that seems to reference Siri’s colorful glow. The keynote will be held at Apple Park in Cupertino, California. CNET will be covering the announcements live, so be sure to follow along.

Get ready for an awe dropping #AppleEvent on Tuesday, September 9! pic.twitter.com/uAcYp2RLMM

— Tim Cook (@tim_cook) August 26, 2025

You can watch the Apple iPhone 17 event live — the official livestream on the Apple website or the livestream on Apple’s YouTube channel are your best options — starting at 10 a.m. PT on Sept. 9, 2025.

What Apple may be cooking up?

Rumors for the upcoming slate of iPhones have been plentiful. Stealing the spotlight is the supposed iPhone 17 Air, which could follow in the footsteps of Samsung’s sleek Galaxy S25 Edge and have a slim profile and lightweight design. The Pro model could get a scratch-resistant antireflective display and an 8x telephoto lens, and the Pro Max could pack a bigger battery. The baseline iPhone 17 could also boast a higher refresh rate. It’s possible that all the phones may include an Apple-developed 5G modem called the C1 chip, which debuted on the iPhone 16E, as well as in-house Wi-Fi chips.

We also expect to learn more about the public rollout of iOS 26 later this fall. The new operating system features a Liquid Glass interface that brings a more transparent, lens-like look to the iPhone and other Apple devices. The Camera app also gets a more minimalistic design, Messages lets you create polls in group chats and a new screening tool can better detect spam texts. You can check out all the features coming to iOS 26.

Will there be a Siri overhaul?

What we might not hear as much about is the updated version of Siri that Apple unveiled at its Worldwide Developers Conference last year. The smarter version of the AI assistant has faced repeated delays and may not arrive until next year or even later. But Apple could discuss other Apple Intelligence updates and features arriving on its new devices.

CNET’s reporters will be on the ground on Sept. 9, bringing you all the latest updates and impressions of whatever Apple has in store.

Technologies

Taylor Swift Is Engaged. Her Post Smashed an Instagram Record

The post broke Instagram’s record for most reposts, but reposts are new to the site. Plus: Memes, and details on her dress, his sweater and that ring.

Nobody is shaking this off: Pop superstar Taylor Swift and Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce announced their engagement on Instagram on Tuesday, and the likes exploded like pyrotechnics at a concert. The post broke Instagram’s record for reposts, even though, to be fair, reposting just started on Instagram in August. Still, the post hit 1 million reposts in less than 6 hours and earned 14 million likes in just the first hour. By Tuesday evening, it had topped 21.2 million likes.

«Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married,» Swift and Kelce wrote on an Instagram post showing multiple photos of the proposal. In the first photo, Kelce is kneeling in front of Swift in a breathtaking floral garden. The second photo shows them standing and holding one another. The next is her hand with an enormous diamond engagement ring, followed by two more of the couple embracing.

The post also features a dynamite emoji and the audio of Swift’s 2024 song So High School. The snippet cuts off with the lyrics, «Are you gonna marry, kiss, or kill me?» (Let’s hope it’s the first or second option.)

Instagram post is already climbing into the millions

As you might expect, the Instagram post delivering the engagement news shot into the stratosphere as soon as it was posted on Tuesday. A representative for Instagram confirmed to CNET that Swift and Kelce’s engagement announcement earned over 14 million likes and 452,000 reposts in just over an hour, reaching 21.2 million by 5 p.m. PT Tuesday.

That’s a huge audience, but it will be interesting to see how high up Swift and Kelce’s engagement news post lands on Instagram’s all-time most popular list.

Right now, the most popular post ever on Instagram is from 2022, when soccer star Lionel Messi posted an image of himself hoisting the just-won World Cup. That post has more than 74 million likes. (Swifties, keep it going if you want to send that post to the top.)

The Instagram representative didn’t immediately comment on whether Swift and Kelce’s post is climbing at the same pace as Messi’s. Messi also has the third-most popular post, again showing him and the World Cup trophy, this time snuggled up in bed together.

But it’s not just soccer photos that top the Instagram most-viewed-ever list. The second most-liked post of all time is a photo of a plain, ordinary egg, posted to the social network back in 2019 as part of someone’s experiment to see if such a mundane image could go hugely viral. I interviewed the person behind Eugene the Egg back in 2019 and am shocked to see it’s still in the No. 2 spot six years later, with more than 60 million likes.

As of Tuesday evening, the post’s 21.2 million likes put it just outside the top 20 list of most-liked, non-soccer posts, just behind post No. 20, singer Billie Eilish’s 2021 reveal of her then-new blond hair. Eilish’s post is at 21.9 million likes and could easily fall off the list and be replaced by Swift and Kelce.

Details on the ring and outfits

According to The New York Post, Swift is wearing a blue silk-blend Polo Ralph Lauren dress in the photo, and Kelce is wearing a navy cable-knit Polo Ralph Lauren sweater. The Post also reports that Swift’s new engagement ring is «an old mine brilliant-cut diamond in a gold bezel setting, which was designed by Kelce himself with the help of Kindred Lubeck of Artifex Fine Jewelry.»

Old mine refers to a historic diamond cut popular from the early 18th century to the late 19th century. Such diamonds are square with rounded corners and have 58 facets, making them anything but a «paper ring.»

The Post delved into everything else Swift had on, including her cognac-colored Louis Vuitton sandals, $18,000 diamond-studded Cartier Santos Demoiselle watch and her «TNT» friendship bracelet by Wove, which was a Christmas gift from her new fiancé.

To no one’s shock, the $400 dress Swift is wearing is selling out fast. Just imagine the excitement when the wedding details start trickling out, and Swift begins to «pick out a white dress,» as Juliet does in Swift’s hit song Love Story.

Memeing the marriage proposal

Until we have more information about the upcoming wedding, fans will have to content themselves by creating and sharing memes because, well, it’s 2025, and that’s part of how we communicate these days.

The Instagram account belonging to the Prince and Princess of Wales even liked the post. (No surprise, really, they hung out when Swift played London.)

Even coffee giant Starbucks got into the act, making a joke about pumpkin spice lattes and posting, «Are we supposed to keep posting about PSL like nothing happened?» The company also noted in the post’s comments that «the long list of Starbucks lovers just got a +1.» («Starbucks lovers» is a sly reference to a lyric in Swift’s 2014 song Blank Space. Swift actually sings, «got a long list of ex-lovers,» but almost anyone with working ears mishears it as something like, «all the lonely Starbucks lovers.»

One meme post on X showed Paul Revere’s famed ride, captioned «me telling everyone I know that Taylor Swift got engaged.»

me telling everyone I know that Taylor Swift got engaged pic.twitter.com/MpS8BLPOZj

— Siobhan ✨ (@Siobachka) August 26, 2025

One Bluesky user wrote, «Very interesting that Taylor Swift got engaged mere months after I did. Get your own thing.»

Another joked, «Can’t believe that on July 8th, 2023, @likethe309, Travis Kelce and I all walked into Arrowhead Stadium to attend the Eras Tour and now one of us is marrying Taylor Swift.»

Matt Ufford warned the billionaire bride-to-be and her NFL star husband to count their pennies, writing, «a word of warning to Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce: weddings can get EXPENSIVE, fast, be sure to leave enough in the account for your monthly expenses.»

There were football jokes, of course.

The Detroit Free Press sought a local connection, using the headline, «Tight end for Detroit Lions’ Week 6 opponent gets engaged to Taylor Swift.»

One person questioned the caption about an English teacher marrying a gym teacher, asking, «Why does Taylor Swift think she’s an English teacher and not a music teacher?»

We’re pretty sure this person really does know who Swift is, but their post was funny anyway. It reads, «Okay, I’ll bite: who’s Taylor Swift? What’s so great about him?»

The two 35-year-old celebrities have been dating for two years. It’s a love story, and Taylor just said yes.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections: Sports Edition Hints and Answers for Aug. 27, #338

Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle for Aug. 27, No. 338

Looking for the most recent regular Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle and Strands puzzles.

Today’s Connections: Sports Edition features a lot of names, and I tend to do terribly on those puzzles. I do even worse when the puzzle editors change a letter in a bunch of names, as they did today. So I did terribly. But you can still solve the puzzle! Read on for hints and the answers.

Connections: Sports Edition is out of beta now, making its debut on Super Bowl Sunday, Feb. 9. That’s a sign that the game has earned enough loyal players that The Athletic, the subscription-based sports journalism site owned by the Times, will continue to publish it. It doesn’t show up in the NYT Games app but now appears in The Athletic’s own app. Or you can continue to play it free online.

Read more: NYT Connections: Sports Edition Puzzle Comes Out of Beta

Hints for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections: Sports Edition puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Call a nurse.

Green group hint: Sports shirt.

Blue group hint: Hoops heroes.

Purple group hint: Signal callers, with a twist.

Answers for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Yellow group: Get better.

Green group: Found on a soccer jersey.

Blue group: 2025 Naismith basketball HOF class.

Purple group: Hall of Fame QBs, with the last letter changed.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections: Sports Edition answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is get better. The four answers are heal, mend, recover and recuperate.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is found on a soccer jersey. The four answers are crest, name, number and sponsor.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is 2025 Naismith basketball HOF class. The four answers are Anthony, Bird, Fowles and Moore.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is Hall of Fame QBs, with the last letter changed. The four answers are Marine (Dan Marino), Moor (Warren Moon), Stables (Ken Stabler) and Warned (Kurt Warner).

Technologies

Today’s NYT Mini Crossword Answers for Wednesday, Aug. 27

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for Aug. 27.

Looking for the most recent Mini Crossword answer? Click here for today’s Mini Crossword hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Wordle, Strands, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Today’s Mini Crossword might be the toughest one I’ve ever done! Hint: There’s a trick to it. Not all the words are spelled quite as they seem. Try solving the Down clues first if you get stuck on the Across ones. Need answers? Read on. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: Tips and Tricks for Solving The New York Times Mini Crossword

Let’s get to those Mini Crossword clues and answers.