Apple Intelligence China Beta Set for This Month as SpaceXAI, Microsoft, HP and Step Roll Out New Products

Earlier, Sspai reported that China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology network access license records showed multiple China iPhones completed license renewal on Sept. 29, adding filing numbers for Apple Intelligence, Tongyi Wanxiang and Tongyi Qianwen large models. The filing covered iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max and later models, including iPhone Air, iPhone 18 Pro series and iPhone Duo, which began pre-sales that evening. The filing numbers were Shanghai-AppleZhiNeng-202506160057, Shanghai-TongYiWanXiang-202410090024 and ZheJiang-TongYiQianWen-20230901.

Sspai also reported that Step opened the weights of its Step 5 Preview model on Oct. 15, releasing BF16 and FP8 versions, a technical blog and open-source development tools. The model uses a sparse mixture-of-experts architecture with 600 billion total parameters and 27 billion activated per token. It supports a context window of up to 1 million tokens and natively accepts text and visual inputs. It targets long-horizon agent tasks such as AI coding, software engineering, professional knowledge work and financial analysis. Step 5 Preview scored 44 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index and, according to Step's previously published test results, ranked among the top three global open-weight models at the time. Step said its single-task cost is about one-eighth that of Claude Opus 5, aiming to lower inference costs for complex agent tasks. The weights are available on Hugging Face and ModelScope, with adaptation support for multiple chip platforms and inference frameworks. Developers can deploy OpenAI API-compatible services through vLLM or SGLang, or use Transformers for offline inference.

SpaceXAI released its Grok Voice 3.0 speech-to-speech model on Oct. 15, saying it is the world's most intelligent voice model, with latency below one second and lower operating costs than other frontier models. In Artificial Analysis testing, it scored 86.9 and ranked first on the speech-to-speech comprehensive leaderboard. Grok Voice 3.0 is available through an API at $0.08 per minute, unchanged from the previous generation. It scored 97% on a full-duplex benchmark that evaluates handling of pauses, turn-taking and user interruptions, and 71.6% on τ-Voice, which tests voice agents in customer-service calls with different accents, background noise and interruptions. Its score was comparable to GPT-Live-1 (Astra), but with about 40% lower latency. Grok Voice is already used in Tesla vehicles and SpaceX-related businesses, supporting millions of voice conversations daily. Starlink customer service handles about 20,000 calls per day through Grok Voice, with about 70% resolved without human intervention. Existing applications using the grok-voice-latest model alias have been automatically upgraded without code changes.

Microsoft announced on Oct. 14 that it is extending Microsoft Defender for Endpoint to Linux desktop devices, now in public preview. The product combines antivirus, endpoint detection and response, vulnerability management and threat analytics. It supports RHEL, CentOS, Ubuntu, Debian, SLES, Fedora and Oracle Linux, and requires a Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Plan 2 or Microsoft 365 E5/E7 subscription. Beyond malware detection and protection, the Linux desktop version supports advanced hunting, live response, device isolation, device inventory, security configuration management and Defender vulnerability management. It uses the existing Linux server security agent and deployment method, with no separate desktop agent required, and supports bringing Linux desktops into the unified Microsoft Defender management platform. Microsoft said all Linux server distributions already supported by Defender for Endpoint can be used on desktops, depending on distribution and kernel version, without being limited by desktop environments such as GNOME or KDE. Defender can automatically identify whether a Linux device is a server or workstation and classify it in device inventory and security management workflows. Microsoft has not announced a general availability date.

Microsoft also released the Xbox Nano wireless controller on Oct. 15. The miniaturized controller is Microsoft's smallest Xbox controller, aimed at younger players, users with smaller hands and people who need portable gaming. It is priced at 329 yuan in China, with pre-sales open and shipping expected from Nov. 4. The Xbox Nano is about 5 inches (12.7 cm) long and weighs about 99 grams, while retaining all 18 standard Xbox controller inputs. It supports Xbox Wireless and Bluetooth, and can connect to Xbox consoles, phones, tablets and PCs. It has a built-in rechargeable battery, so no AA batteries or extra charging kit are needed. It also includes a customizable action button that can be set for screenshots, game recording and other common shortcuts.

HP recently launched its second-generation keyboard PC, the EliteBoard G2a. It carries AMD Ryzen AI PRO 400 series processors, supports up to 64GB DDR5 memory and 2TB solid-state storage, and has an NPU with up to 50 TOPS of compute. It is available in the US starting at $3,028. The EliteBoard G2a has a flat design similar to an ordinary office keyboard, measuring 358.1 x 118.7 x 17.9 mm and weighing about 670 grams. It integrates a motherboard, processor, memory, solid-state drive and cooling system, and includes a backlit keyboard, microphone and stereo speakers. Users can connect a compatible external monitor to use it as a complete Windows PC. Processor options are the AMD Ryzen AI 5 PRO 435, a 6-core/12-thread chip with Radeon 840M graphics, and the Ryzen AI 7 PRO 450, an 8-core/16-thread chip with Radeon 860M graphics. Both have an NPU with up to 50 TOPS. The machine offers two DDR5-5600 SO-DIMM memory slots, up to 64GB memory and 2TB M.2 NVMe storage with PCIe 4.0 x4. It has one USB4 port with up to 40Gbps transfer speed and one USB-C port with up to 10Gbps, plus optional Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6.0.