The word “local” has become synonymous with sustainability, whether it’s food, clothes or the materials used to construct buildings. But while consumers can probably go to a local lumberyard to buy lumber from sustainably grown trees cut at nearby sawmills, no one asks for local glass.

If they did, it would be hard to give an answer.

The raw materials that go into glass—silica sand, soda ash and limestone—are natural, but the sources of those materials are rarely known to the buyer.

The process by which sand becomes sheets of glass is often far from transparent. The sand, which makes up over 70% of glass, could come from a faraway riverbed, lakeshore or inland limestone outcrop. Sand with at least 95% silica content is called silica sand, and only the purest is suitable for architectural glass production. Such sand is found in limited areas.

If the glass is colorless, its potential sources are even more limited, because colorless low-iron glass—popularized by Apple’s flagship stores and luxury towers around the world—requires 99% pure silica sand.

Glass production in Venice

The mysteries of glass production have a historical precedent that can be traced back to trade secrets of the Venetian Empire.

Venice, particularly the island of Murano, became the center for glass production largely due to its strategic location for importing raw materials and production know-how and exporting coveted glass objects.

From the 11th to the 16th centuries, the secrets of glassmaking were protected by the Venetians until three glassmakers were smuggled out by King Louis XIV of France, who applied the technology to create the Palace of Versailles’ Hall of Mirrors.

Venice was an otherwise unlikely location for glassmaking.

Neither the primary materials of sand and soda ash (sodium carbonate) nor the firewood of the medieval Venetian glassmakers were found in the city’s immediate vicinity. They were transported from the riverbeds of the Ticino River in Switzerland and the Agide River, which flows from the Austria-Switzerland border to the Adriatic Sea south of Venice. Soda ash, which is needed to lower the melting point of silica sand, was brought from Syria and Egypt.

So Venetian glass production was not local; it was dependent on precious resources imported from afar on ships.

Rising demand for low-iron, seamless glass

In the past few decades, low-iron glass, known for its colorlessness, has become the contemporary symbol of high-end architecture. The glass appears to disappear.

Low-iron glass is made from ultrapure sand that is low in iron oxide. Iron causes the green tint seen in ordinary glass. In architecture, low-iron glass doesn’t affect the performance—only the appearance. But it is prized.

In the U.S., this type of sand is found in a few locations, primarily in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois and Missouri, where sand as white and fine as sugar—thus called saccharoidal—is mined from St. Peter sandstone. Other locations where it can be found around the world include Queensland in Australia and parts of China. Less pure sand can be purified by methods such as acid washing or magnetic separation.

Perhaps no corporation has popularized low-iron and seamless glass in architecture more than the technology giant Apple.

Glass has become fundamentally linked with Apple’s products and architecture, including its flagship stores’ expensive and daring experiments in architectural uses of glass.

Apple’s first showroom, completed in Soho in New York in 2002, showcased all-glass stairs that were strengthened with hurricane- and bullet-resistant plastic interlayers sandwiched between five sheets of glass. The treads attach to all glass walls with hockey puck-sized titanium hardware, making both the glass stairs and the shoppers appear to float.

The company’s iconic flagship store near New York’s Central Park is an all-glass cube measuring 32.5 feet (10 meters) on each side and serving as a vestibule to the store below. The first version was completed in 2006 using 90 panels, which was a technical feat. Then, in 2011, Apple reconstructed the cube in the same location, same size, but with only 15 panels, minimizing the number of seams and hardware while maximizing transparency.

Today, low-iron glass has become the standard for high-profile architecture and those who can afford it, including the “pencil towers” in Manhattan’s Billionaires’ Row.

Glass’s climate impact

Glass walls common in high-rise buildings today have other drawbacks. They help to heat up the room during increasingly hot summers and contribute to heat loss in winter, increasing dependence on artificial cooling and heating.

The glassmaking process is energy intensive and relies on nonrenewable resources.

To bring sand to its molten state, the furnace must be heated to over 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit (1,500 degrees Celsius) for as long as 50 hours, which requires burning fossil fuels such as natural gas, releasing greenhouse gases. Once heated to that temperature, the furnace runs 24/7 and is rarely shut down.

The soda ash and limestone also release carbon dioxide during melting. Moreover, glass production requires mining or producing nonrenewable natural resources such as sand, soda ash, lime and fuel. Transporting them further increases emissions.

Production and fabrication of extra-large glass panels rely on specialized equipment and occur only at a limited number of plants in the world, meaning transportation increases the carbon footprint.

Architectural glass is also difficult to recycle, largely due to the labor involved in separating glass from the building assembly.

Although glass is touted as infinitely recyclable, only 6% of architectural glass is downcycled into glass products that require less purity and precision, and almost none is recycled into architectural glass. The rest ends up in landfills.

The increasing demand for glass that is colorless, extra large and seamless contributes to glass’s sustainability problem.

How can we make glass more sustainable?

There are ways to reduce glass’s environmental footprint.

Researchers and companies are working on new types of glass that could lower its climate impact, such as using materials that lower the amount of heat necessary to make glass. Replacing natural gas, typically used in glassmaking, with less-polluting power sources can also reduce emissions.

Low-e coatings, a thin coat of silver sprayed onto a glass surface, can help reduce the amount of heat that reaches a building’s interior by reflecting both the visible light and heat, but the coating can’t fully eliminate solar heat gain.

People can also alter their standards and accept smaller and less ultraclear panels. Think of the green tint not as impure but natural.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Apple says the camera “uses AI” to expand the field of view and adjust the orientation. It’s super convenient, especially considering that you don’t have to alter how you hold your phone, meaning no more precarious grip. It much more comfortable too, but it will probably still take time to retrain your muscle memory and stop yourself switching to landscape mode for selfies.

Don’t forget, all of the selfie cameras on these new devices are also getting a boost in image quality thanks to a new 18-megapixel sensor that can pack in more detail. If you shoot a lot of selfie videos, your clips will have much better stabilization in 4K HDR, too.

Dual Capture

You can finally record with both the front and rear cameras natively in the iPhone camera app! OK, this is technically not new. You’ve been able to do this via a third-party app for years, and a few Android phones have had this feature natively in the camera app for as long as a decade. Samsung calls it Dual Recording on its Galaxy phones, while HMD’s Nokia phones—when they were still a thing—called it a “bothie.” Now it’s native on the new iPhone.

Tap the overflow camera menu on the top right in video mode and choose Dual Capture. It works up to 4K 30 frames per second, and you’ll see a floating preview of the front camera—like when you’re on a video call—with the main viewfinder displaying the view from the rear camera. The placement of the floating front camera view seems to be important because it doesn’t look like you can change it post-capture, so you’ll want to make sure you flick it to a spot where it doesn’t block the action.

It’s not groundbreaking, but it’s a fun little capability I think a lot of people will take advantage of now that it’s natively built into the camera app.

8X Zoom

I test phones for a living, but I’m also a photographer, and the camera I use most often is the telephoto zoom. I find the main cameras on most phones these days a little too wide, so optical zoom options let me get closer to the subject.

Color me excited that the new iPhone 17 Pro models can go up to 8X zoom and retain optical-like quality! Apple has upgraded the telephoto camera to 48 megapixels, meaning you’ll be able to see more detail in your shots. It’s also a 4X optical zoom camera. That might sound like a step back, considering Pro iPhones have offered 5X optical zoom for several years. However, the upgrade in megapixel count and the larger sensor should offer better quality images overall, whether at 4X, 5X, or even up to 8X.

Apple on Tuesday rolled out its next generation iPhones, which include a new ultra-thin model and a slight price hike for one of its high-end models, while the company feels the squeeze of a global trade war.

The iPhone 17 line-up includes a new slimmed-down model that will adopt the “Air” name that Apple already uses for its sleekest iPads and Mac computers. In what has become an annual rite for Apple, all four new iPhone 17 models will feature better cameras and longer-lasting batteries than last year’s lineup. The iPhone 17 will all boast at least 256 gigabytes of storage, doubling the minimum amount from the last generation.

“We are raising the bar again,” Apple CEO Tim Cook boasted in front of a crowd gathered in an auditorium named after the company’s late co-founder, Steve Jobs, located on its campus in Cupertino, California.

Grappling with tariffs

The new iPhones are the first to be released since President Donald Trump returned to the White House and unleashed a barrage of tariffs, in what his administration says is an attempt to bring overseas manufacturing back to the U.S.—a crusade that has thrust Cook into the hot seat.

All the iPhone 17 models are still expected to be made in Apple’s manufacturing hubs in China and India, exposing them to some of Trump’s tariffs.

Analysts believe the additional fees on iPhones coming into the U.S. increase the pressure on Apple to raise prices to help protect its profit margins on its most marquee product.

Without giving a specific reason, Apple will charge $1,100 for the iPhone 17 Pro, an increase of $100, or 10%, from previous versions of that model. The iPhone Air will start at $1,000—the price of last year’s iPhone 16 Pro.

Apple is sticking with the same starting price for the basic iPhone 17 at $800 and the iPhone 17 Pro Max at $1,200.

All four models will be in stores Sept. 19.

Apple’s shares closed down 1.5% Tuesday amid gains in the broader stock market, an indication that investors might be worried the company didn’t do enough to prop up its profits amid the trade war.

A breath of fresh iPhone Air

The release of the iPhone 17 Air created the biggest buzz of the day as Apple found a way to pack in most of the punch of its Pro models while coming up with a fetching design that Forrester Research analyst Dipanjan Chatterjee will prod more trend-conscious consumers to splurge on the latest fashion in tech devices. The Air model is just 5.6 millimeters wide compared to 8 to 9 millimeters for the other iPhone 17 choices.

“There were plenty of crackles and one big pop,” Chatterjee said of Tuesday’s event.

One of the crackles came with the introduction of new features aimed at the selfie culture. The iPhone 17 models include a front camera with more megapixels for crisper photos, along with an “Center Stage” option that will take advantage of a wider field of view and a new sensor that will enable users to take landscape photos without having to rotate the iPhone.

Although most of the upgrades to the iPhone 17 are similar to the incremental improvements of recent years, Apple appears to have done enough to “bring a sense of newness to the iPhone, which has remained the same for too long,” said PP Foresight analyst Paolo Pescatore.

Apple also unveiled its latest smartwatches, including a health tool that is supposed to help detect potential hypertension, and its next generation wireless AirPod headphones.

Looking for a sales accelerator

Apple has been trying to accelerate its growth after several years of lackluster sales growth that has still been enough to maintain its status as a moneymaking machine while raising questions about its ability to innovate. Those doubts, combined with the uncertainties swirling around tariffs, are, one of the reasons the company’s market value has dropped by 6% so far this year while the tech-driven Nasdaq composite index has gained 13%.

While the iPhone 16, released last year, fared reasonably well, the models didn’t sell quite as well as analysts had anticipated because Apple failed to deliver all of the artificial intelligence features it had promised, including a smarter and more versatile Siri assistant. The Siri improvements have been pushed back until next year.

“To truly differentiate and outperform its competition, Apple will have to crack AI as a new contextual user-interface,” predicted Thomas Hussan, another analyst for Forrester Research.

The global trade war has compounded Apple’s challenges.

Both Trump and U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick have repeatedly insisted that iPhones be made in the U.S. instead of overseas. It’s an unrealistic demand that analysts say would take years to pull off and would result in a doubling, or even a tripling, of the iPhone’s current average price of about $1,000.

Cook tried to placate Trump by initially pledging that Apple would invest $500 billion i n the U.S. over the next four years, and then upped the ante last month by adding another $100 billion to the commitment. He also gifted Trump a statue featuring a 24-karat gold base.

That kind of diplomacy has helped insulate Apple from Trump’s most severe tariffs. However, with the iPhones being brought into the U.S. still facing duties of about 25%, some analysts speculated the company would raise prices to help preserve its hefty profit margins. But for the most part, Apple and other major smartphone makers such as Samsung and Google are sticking with the same prices as last year.

© 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.