IDC counts a 4 per cent fall in iPhone shipments, Sega pulls Shogun 2, and more Apple newsIDC counts a 4 per cent fall in iPhone shipments, Sega pulls Shogun 2, and more Apple news

Seven smaller Apple stories from the past day, from a new smartphone count to a court hearing over the colour of a 2015 iPhone.

IDC: iPhone shipments fell 4 per cent in Q3 2026

Apple shipped 57.3 million iPhones in the third quarter of 2026, down 4 per cent from 59.7 million a year earlier, according to preliminary figures IDC published on 15 October. The whole smartphone market fell 22 per cent to 255.3 million units, which IDC calls a record decline. Samsung stayed first with 57.8 million, down 5.8 per cent, leaving Apple about half a million units behind with 22.4 per cent of the market.

IDC blames the memory shortage, with 9to5Mac reporting memory costs up about 350 per cent on last year. IDC's Nabila Popal said the market has "not yet reached the bottom". Apple's decline was the smallest in the top five, so its share rose from 18.2 per cent while the Android makers selling cheaper phones lost far more. Counterpoint's count of the same quarter put the iPhone at a record 22 per cent with the market down 20 per cent, so the two trackers agree on the shape if not the decimals.

Apple's French regulatory site lists a new iPad mini Smart Folio

This item is a leak. Apple's French regulatory information site carries an entry for an iPad mini Smart Folio with model number A3632, which MacRumors and 9to5Mac both say matches no case Apple sells. The document is dated 8 September, according to 9to5Mac, which also found that it lists at least 6,610 mg of rare earth elements against 3,947 mg for the current folio, suggesting different magnets. Apple has not announced a new iPad mini and has said nothing about the listing.

Separately, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said on his Power On podcast that Apple has tested both 60Hz and 120Hz ProMotion OLED panels for the next iPad mini, and that he does not know which it chose. The 60Hz claim began with yeux1122, a Korean account with a mixed record, in July. The regulatory entry is the strongest evidence yet that a new model is close; the refresh rate is still open. Our guide to which iPad mini 8 claims rest on Apple's code and which are still rumour sets out the rest.

Sega pulls Total War: Shogun 2 Complete Edition from sale

Sega has withdrawn Total War: Shogun 2 Complete Edition from sale two days after its 13 October Windows release, and is restoring the 2011 original to stores. In a statement quoted by Hardware Busters, Sega said the remaster had fallen short of players' expectations and its own standards. Players had reported crashes, poor performance and old bugs, and the edition's Steam rating was Overwhelmingly Negative before it went. Existing owners keep it. Sega has given no return date and has said nothing about refunds beyond each store's normal policy.

The Mac matters here because Feral Interactive is porting this edition to macOS for the first quarter of 2027, as we reported when Shogun 2 Complete Edition was announced for Mac. Neither Sega nor Feral has said whether that date moves. A Mac port built on a Windows edition that has just been withdrawn is unlikely to ship before the fixes do.

MacPaw launches Eney, an AI assistant for Mac and iPhone

MacPaw, the maker of CleanMyMac and Setapp, released Eney on 15 October. MacPaw's site lists it for Apple silicon Macs on macOS 15 or later, through its website or Setapp, and for iPhone on the App Store. It offers suggestions as you work, such as a summary when you copy text, writing correction in Mail, Slack and browsers, call transcription without a meeting bot, and warnings about low disk space or apps that keep crashing. According to 9to5Mac, it uses a mix of local and cloud models, and keeps its memory of the user on the Mac.

After a 14-day trial, plans cost $14.99, $29.99 and $49.99 a month in the US. MacPaw's own page gives 10,000, 25,000 and 50,000 AI credits a month, more on the top two plans than 9to5Mac reported, and unused credits do not roll over. That pricing puts it next to a ChatGPT or Claude subscription rather than next to the free Apple Intelligence features built into macOS.

Apple Sports 4.5 adds five football competitions and in-game stats

Apple Sports 4.5 shows key statistics in Live Activities during breaks in play, and adds five football competitions: English League One and League Two, Brazil's Serie B, Norway's Eliteserien and the UEFA Nations League, 9to5Mac reports from Apple's release notes. For fans of clubs in England's third and fourth tiers, this is the first time Apple's app follows their league at all.

Greg Joswiak tells TIME Apple's AI is not for the lunatic fringe

Apple's marketing chief Greg Joswiak told TIME that Apple Intelligence is aimed at everyday users, not what the magazine's Andrew R. Chow calls Silicon Valley's "lunatic fringe". Of people chasing superintelligence, Joswiak said: "We love them, and they can use it too, but that's not our target." Asked about new hardware rivals, a group TIME says includes OpenAI's devices, he said Apple does not feel threatened, because its integration of hardware and software produces a better experience. MacRumors and 9to5Mac report that John Ternus is on the cover of the Best Inventions issue, which TIME says goes on sale on 26 October.

The rest of the piece is Ternus's, and we covered it when it appeared: Ternus traced the iPhone Duo back to a 2011 patent and called the memory shortage a crisis.

Envirodigm's iPhone anodisation trade secret case reaches the appeal court

A California Court of Appeal panel heard Envirodigm Inc. v. Apple Inc., case H052479, on 15 October, Bloomberg Law reports. Envirodigm, an environmental consultancy, says Apple used its anodisation formula for the coloured aluminium body of a 2015 iPhone in breach of a non-disclosure agreement. The trial court in Santa Clara County gave Apple summary judgment on the trade secret claim, ruling that Envirodigm never described the formula precisely enough, but found the contract claim triable. Apple argued that both claims depend on that description. Justice Daniel Bromberg asked why the trade secret description should limit the contract claim. No ruling has been issued.

Our take

The IDC figures are the item with the most weight. A 22 per cent drop in a market as mature as smartphones is not a weak quarter but a supply shock, and Apple's share gain comes from losing less than everyone else, not from selling more. The test of whether that lasts is the 2 November results, John Ternus's first as chief executive. Apple will report revenue, not units, so watch the iPhone line and what it says about memory costs and margins.

On the iPad mini, a regulatory filing is better evidence than a leaker's post, and a new case with different magnets is a fair sign that the current folio will not fit. Our advice is plain: anyone about to buy a case for an iPad mini should wait the eleven days to Apple's expected launch. Gurman not knowing the refresh rate is also useful. A 60Hz OLED on a tablet that is expected to cost more would be the detail reviewers judge it by.

Joswiak's line is a positioning choice more than a technical one. It casts Apple's slower, private and mostly on-device AI as the deliberate choice for ordinary users rather than a lag behind OpenAI. That framing is easier to hold while Siri AI depends on Google's Gemini models, as Ternus admitted in the same piece, and it will be judged by whether the Siri AI update works for those everyday users. Eney's credit-based pricing shows the other model: from a developer's side, APPDOOK notes that an independent Mac assistant has to charge by usage because it pays for cloud inference that Apple absorbs. Shogun 2 is a smaller lesson for Mac gamers: a native port is only as good as the edition it starts from.