Trump wanted a US-made iPhone. Apple gave him a gold statue.

Trump’s chip tariffs won’t hit Apple despite no plans for a US-made iPhone.

It's now clear that Apple plans to survive Donald Trump's trade war by playing to the president's ego.

On Wednesday, Trump announced that Apple would be exempt from a threatened 100 percent tariff on semiconductors that could have driven up the cost of iPhones globally, Reuters reported. Seemingly to secure this exemption, Apple promised to increase its total investment commitment in the US by $100 billion, while also gifting Trump a one-of-a-kind statue that Apple CEO Tim Cook had engraved with Trump's name.

It seemingly serves as a bizarre love letter to Trump's push to bring tech manufacturing into the US, despite Apple resisting that push for its most popular product.

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Review: Framework Desktop is a mash-up of a regular desktop PC and the Mac Studio

Size matters most for Framework’s first stab at a desktop workstation/gaming PC.

Framework’s main claim to fame is its commitment to modular, upgradeable, repairable laptops. The jury’s still out on early 2024’s Framework Laptop 16 and mid-2025’s Framework Laptop 12, neither of which has seen a hardware refresh, but so far, the company has released half a dozen iterations of its flagship Framework Laptop 13 in less than five years. If you bought one of the originals right when it first launched, you could go to Framework’s site, buy an all-new motherboard and RAM, and get a substantial upgrade in performance and other capabilities without having to change anything else about your laptop.

Framework’s laptops haven’t been adopted as industry-wide standards, but in many ways, they seem built to reflect the flexibility and modularity that has drawn me to desktop PCs for more than two decades.

That's what makes the Framework Desktop so weird. Not only is Framework navigating into a product category where its main innovation and claim to fame is totally unnecessary. But it’s actually doing that with a desktop that’s less upgradeable and modular than any given self-built desktop PC.

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2025 Subaru WRX tS review: A scalpel-sharp chassis lets this car dance

Lots of suspension tweaks but no extra power for this WRX variant.

The Subaru WRX has always been the equivalent of an automotive shrug. Not because it lacks character but because it simply doesn't care what others think. It's a punk rock band with enough talent to fill stadiums but band members who don't seem to care about chasing fame. And the STI versions of yesteryear proved so talented that fame chased them.

For 2025, Subaru updated the WRX to now include the tS, which at first glance appears to be the same flannel-wearing street fighter. But looks can be deceiving. The tS hides sharpened tools underneath, translating to better handling and responsiveness.

What does “tS” really mean?

Subaru positions the tS as being tuned by STI, but it's not an STI return. Sure, that's technically true; only Subaru can name something STI. And to be clear, there's no extra power here, no gigantic wing that takes out flocks of birds, and no pink STI badge on the trunk. But the tS is imbued with enough STI-ness to make a case.

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President Trump says Intel’s new CEO “must resign immediately”

President accuses semiconductor industry veteran Lip-Bu Tan of being “highly conflicted.”

Donald Trump has called for the newly appointed chief executive of Intel, Lip-Bu Tan, to resign, alleging that the semiconductor industry veteran is “highly conflicted.”

“The CEO of INTEL is highly CONFLICTED and must resign, immediately,” Trump said in his post on his Truth Social website on Thursday. “There is no other solution to this problem.”

The US president’s post did not provide details of Tan’s alleged conflicts of interest. Trump’s broadside follows a letter from Republican Senator Tom Cotton to the US chipmaker’s board chair this week expressing “concern about the security and integrity of Intel’s operations” and Tan’s ties to China.

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