With news coming in throughout the week, it can be difficult to sift out the important updates from the noise. To keep readers up to date, we’ve compiled the Weekly Tech Recap, where we take a look at the top news that shook up the world of technology. This week, Apple released the first public beta for iOS 26, GitHub launched its natural language app creation tool, new leaks revealed GPT-5 launch date and more
Top tech news of the week:
1) Apple releases iOS 26 update:
Afte releasing four rounds of developer beta update for its latest iOS 26 software, Apple finally released its latest first publica beta this week giving a look at the new Liquid Glass interface along with a number of other features.
While the Cupertino-based tech giant rolled out the iOS 26 Developer Beta almost immediately after its WWDC keynote, public betas are typically released in July after Apple addresses initial issues. The company rolled out the fourth developer beta for iPad and iPhone earlier this week as well.
Notably, developer betas are primarily meant for app developers and advanced users, giving them time to test their apps ahead of the official release. Meanwhile, public betas are aimed at a wider audience, allowing them to try out pre-release iOS versions to identify bugs and provide feedback. Public betas are usually a few versions behind developer betas, suggesting they should be more stable.
2) GitHub launches Spark AI to create apps with natural language:
While GitHub has been slowly adding AI-powered features for developers over the last couple of years, the Microsoft-owned company has gone a step further with its latest feature called GitHub Spark, which allows users to create an app by simply giving prompts in natural language.
The new feature, currently an experiment under the GitHub Next labs, gives users the choice between using an OpenAI GPT model or a Claude Sonnet model. Notably, while OpenAI has tuned its latest models for developers, Claude’s Sonnet models continue to generate buzz in developer circles for their technical reasoning and debugging abilities.
With Spark, GitHub allows users to quickly build a small web app or ‘micro app’ using natural language. Unlike other GitHub tools, Spark doesn’t just generate code for the app but also runs it and displays an interactive preview that can be further refined through additional prompts.
3) Sam Altman warns about using ChatGPT as therapist:
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has sounded alarm bells around sharing too much personal data with an AI system, given that there are currently no frameworks in place to safeguard a user’s privacy. Notably, there has been a growing trend among young AI users to share their personal problems with AI chatbots, seeking relationship, life, or legal advice, largely because these generative AI systems have access to a wide knowledge base.
Speaking on a podcast with Theo Von, Altman said, “I think we will certainly need a legal or a policy framework for AI. One example that we’ve been thinking about a lot this is like a maybe not quite what you’re asking this is like a very human centric version of that question people talk about the most personal shit in their lives to ChatGPT it’s you know people use it young people especially like use it as a therapist a life coach uh having these relationship problems, what should I do? And right now, if you talk to a therapist or a lawyer or a doctor about those problems, there’s like legal privilege for it, you know, like it’s there’s doctor patient confidentiality, there’s legal confidentiality”
4) OpenAI could launch GPT-5 next month:
OpenAI’s much awaited GPT-5 model could finally make its debut in early August, according to a report by The Verge. GPT-5 will be the latest model running the company’s ChatGPT AI bot and will be the first ever LLM from it to come with unified reasoning capabilites.
Sam Altman had recently announced in a post on X that GPT-5 will be launching soon. The OpenAI CEO made the announcement in an announcement about an AI model from the company that achieved gold level performance at the 2025 IMO competiton. However, he noted that GPT-5 won’t have IMO gold level capabilities for ‘many months’.
In a recent podcast Altman teased new capabilites of GPT-5 noting that the model helped him answer a difficult email that he should have been able to do but couldn’t.
5) Starlink suffers global outage:
Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet service suffered a major global outage this week that left tens of thousands of users across the US, UK, Germany, Zimbabwe, Romania, and beyond without internet access for over two hours on Thursday.
The disruption, which lasted approximately 2.5 hours, may be one of the longest recorded outages in Starlink’s operational history. The incident occurred just one day after the company revealed a new T-Satellite rollout in partnership with T-Mobile, designed to extend connectivity to remote areas.
