Apple had deliberate to accumulate the corporate behind Halide final summer season, the favored third-party digicam app for iOS, new court docket paperwork reveal.
Halide, first launched in 2017, gave smartphone photographers extra granular, handbook management over their pictures. Its setting, Mission Zero, allowed customers to skirt among the iPhone’s automated picture processing, reaching extra pure contrasts and shadows. Its most up-to-date iteration, Halide Mark II, prices $19.99 per yr for a subscription or $2.99 per 30 days.
Although Apple in the end didn’t purchase Lux Optics, the tech big did poach cofounder and designer Sebastiaan de With to hitch its design crew. He joined the crew in January 2026.
A brand new lawsuit filed by Lux co-founder Ben Sandofsky, first lined by The Data, alleges that de With had taken confidential info, together with supply code, with him amid his transfer to Apple, and that he had been fired in December for utilizing $150,000 in Lux firm funds to pay for private bills since 2022. De With has to date denied these claims.
As per The Data, Apple had wished to accumulate Lux to enhance its built-in Digital camera app, saying this was the “high precedence for the corporate proper now.” Apple had deliberate for the iPhone 18 Professional to “match professional-grade cameras by way of sure superior options.” Apple itself was not named as a defendant within the case, simply de With himself.
Really helpful by Our Editors
The launch of the iPhone 18 Professional may deliver some severe upgrades to the system’s digicam. In February, Apple YouTuber Jon Prosser claimed that Apple would transfer the telephone’s Dynamic Island to the top-left of the display with the iPhone 18 Professional, and away from the middle of the telephone’s show. Prosser additionally predicted that Apple could exchange the pill-shaped cutout used for its selfie digicam and its Face ID sensors with a punch-hole digicam and an under-display Face ID sensor.
Get Our Finest Tales!
Your Each day Dose of Our High Tech Information
Join our What’s New Now publication to obtain the newest information, greatest new merchandise, and professional recommendation from the editors of PCMag.
Join our What’s New Now publication to obtain the newest information, greatest new merchandise, and professional recommendation from the editors of PCMag.
By clicking Signal Me Up, you affirm you’re 16+ and comply with our Phrases of Use and Privateness
Coverage.
Thanks for signing up!
Your subscription has been confirmed. Regulate your inbox!
About Our Professional
Expertise
I’m a reporter masking weekend information. Earlier than becoming a member of PCMag in 2024, I picked up bylines in BBC Information, The Guardian, The Instances of London, The Each day Beast, Vice, Slate, Quick Firm, The Night Commonplace, The i, TechRadar, and Decrypt Media.
I’ve been a PC gamer because you needed to set up video games from a number of CD-ROMs by hand. As a reporter, I’m passionate concerning the intersection of tech and human lives. I’ve lined the whole lot from crypto scandals to the artwork world, in addition to conspiracy theories, UK politics, and Russia and overseas affairs.
Learn Full Bio
