All over the world, Apple enjoys spending its milestone 50th anniversary month in the company of the artists and fans who have made the last five decades extraordinary, the company said recently of its worldwide birthday parties.
The festivities began on March 13 when Grammy Award-winning artist Alicia Keys took to the iconic steps of Apple Grand Central in New York City. Celebrations also rolled in China and South Korea, then London and Sydney, Australia. We’ve added new photos, below.
Four new companies will join Apple’s American Manufacturing Program (AMP), the iPhone giant said Thursday. It adds them to a growing roster of U.S.-based manufacturing partners as part of its $600 billion, four-year commitment to U.S. manufacturing.
“At Apple, we believe in the power of American innovation and manufacturing, and we’re proud to partner with even more companies to produce critical components and cutting-edge materials for our products right here in the U.S.,” said CEO Tim Cook.
Samsung has been using a 200MP primary camera on its flagship Galaxy phones for a while now. Apple may supposedly join the list in 2027, as it is reportedly evaluating such a sensor for future use.
Several upcoming flagship Android phones from Chinese brands due to launch this year will adopt a 200MP primary camera.
When it released watchOS 26.4 on Tuesday, Apple fixed an annoying recent addition to the Workout app. After you update, you can tap on the big fat workout type icon to start recording a workout quickly and easily.
It’s a small thing, but when you’re dealing with a screen the size of the Apple Watch — and especially when you’re outside in the bright sun, getting ready to jump into a workout — the bigger the tap target, the better.
Apple rolled out what it calls the biggest update to Analytics tool in the App Store Connect app since the tool launched in 2018, according to a new update Wednesday. It gives app developers a significantly more powerful set of instruments to track how their apps and games perform. And, crucially, how well they can make money, the iPhone giant said.
But not everyone’s thrilled with it so far.
Your MacBook will now warn you when you plug in a slow charger. Apple quietly introduced this feature in macOS Tahoe 26.4.
The “Slow Charger” warning can help you quickly identify underpowered adapters that could slow down charging or affect your MacBook’s performance during use.
Apple plans a top-to-bottom revamp of Siri in iOS 27 that turns the beleaguered voice assistant into an AI chatbot at the heart of iPhones, Macs and iPads, according to a new report.
Apple might even launch a standalone Siri app that, like competing apps from ChatGPT and Google Gemini, serves as a central hub for all the user’s interactions with the AI assistant.
iPad aficionados should be excited that John Ternus could someday take over as Apple CEO. As the head of hardware engineering, he’s been a sort of cheerleader for Apple’s tablet, including urging the company to develop new capabilities that push the iPad beyond being just a big iPhone.
If Ternus becomes Apple CEO — he’s apparently the frontrunner for the position — he’d have the authority to ensure the iPad fulfills its enormous potential.
macOS Tahoe 26.4, which Apple released Tuesday, brings several noticeable improvements and changes to the Mac’s operating system. While not a massive overhaul, this is exactly the kind of point update Tahoe needs right now.
Let’s take a look at what’s new in macOS Tahoe 26.4.
Update: Apple confirmed its plan to sell ads in Apple Maps when it announced the upcoming launch of Apple Business on Tuesday.
“Beginning this summer in the U.S. and Canada, businesses will have a new way to be discovered by using Apple Business to create ads on Maps,” the company said in a press release. “Ads on Maps will appear when users search in Maps, and can appear at the top of a user’s search results based on relevance, as well as at the top of a new Suggested Places experience in Maps, which will display recommendations based on what’s trending nearby, the user’s recent searches, and more. Ads will be clearly marked to ensure transparency for Maps users.”
Apple’s website says ads in Apple Maps are “coming soon.”
Previously: Apple’s getting ready to roll out advertising in its Maps application as part of a broader effort to grow its already substantial services revenue, according to a new report Monday. An announcement about plans to bring ads to Maps could come as early as this month.
Apple is expanding its push into workplace services with the introduction of Apple Business, a new platform designed to give companies a single place to manage devices, communicate with customers, and grow their presence across Apple’s ecosystem.
Announced Tuesday, Apple Business bundles tools that have traditionally been spread across multiple services. The platform includes device management features for iPhones, iPads and Macs, along with business email, customer communication tools, and new ways for companies to appear in apps like Apple Maps.
“Apple Business is a significant leap forward in our decades-long commitment to helping companies of all sizes leverage the power of Apple products and services to run and grow,” said Susan Prescott, Apple’s vice president of enterprise and education marketing, in a press release. “We’ve unified Apple’s strongest business offerings into one simple, secure platform, delivering key features for organizations in every stage and sector, including built-in device management, collaboration tools, and additional ways to reach new customers.”
Accessory maker Ugreen just expanded its lineup with two new Thunderbolt 5 docking stations targeting professionals, creators and power users who demand the most from their Mac setups. The flagship Maxidok 17-in-1 ($389.99 at Ugreen, normally $499.99) and formidable-but-less-so Maxidok 10-in-1 ($249.99 at Ugreen, normally $299.99) just became available Tuesday on Amazon after initial release earlier in March.
Update: The sophisticated DarkSword hacking technique that came to light last week — capable of silently taking over iPhones the moment a user visits an infected website — just got worse for Apple users running older software, TechCrunch reported Monday.
Someone leaked versions of DarkSword on code-sharing site GitHub. That means DarkSword attacks likely will increase — especially since iOS expertise is not required to deploy the technique.
“This is bad. They are way too easy to repurpose,” iVerify co-founder Matthias Frielingsdorf told TechCrunch. “I don’t think that can be contained anymore. So we need to expect criminals and others to start deploying this.”
Apple spokesperson Sarah O’Rourke reminded people that “keeping software up to date is the single most important thing you can do to maintain the security of your Apple products.” So if you haven’t updated to the latest iOS for your device, do so now.
Anyone thinking about adding a portable SSD to their Mac or iPad would be wise to make that purchase soon. Prices for the external storage devices are already on the rise.
Why? For the same reason that Apple needed to raise prices for its newest MacBooks.
The annual Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC26) will take place June 8–12, according to an update Monday on the Apple Developer website — setting the stage for what promises to be one of the company’s most anticipated software events in years. The event will mark the arrival of iOS 27, macOS 27 and more.
A newly uncovered video from July 1999 captures Steve Jobs speaking candidly to Apple employees just days after the launch of the wildly successful iBook G3. It offers an unfiltered window into the mind of a CEO who had just pulled a company back from the brink.
The iPhone Air accomplished one of the goals Apple surely had for it: It’s reportedly outselling the device it replaced — and by a wide margin. That said, the super-slim iPhone hasn’t exactly taken the world by storm.
Still, it’s far from the flop that some critics labeled it.
Following in Google’s footsteps, Samsung added AirDrop support to its newest flagship phones: the Galaxy S26 series. This enables iPhone and Galaxy S26 users to transfer files between devices seamlessly.
Top be clear, Google and Samsung enabled AirDrop support in Quick Share without Apple’s help.
This week on the Cult of Mac podcast: The surprise release of AirPods Max 2 gives us plenty to talk about (including all the things Apple didn’t fix about the high-end headphones).
Plus, special guest Christina Warren (developer advocate at GitHub and co-host of the MacBreak Weekly podcast) joins us for a deep dive into one of Leander’s favorite topics — OpenClaw, the open-source AI agent that’s got everyone snapping up Mac minis, and the rise of agentic coding.
Also on the Cult of Mac podcast:
Listen to this week’s episode of the Cult of Mac podcast in the Podcasts app or your favorite podcast app. (Be sure to subscribe and leave us a review if you like it!) Or watch the video version, embedded below.
CEO Tim Cook says Apple just had its “best launch week ever for first-time Mac customers.” That means the MacBook Neo is doing exactly what it was designed to do: bring in people who have never owned a Mac before.
The first entry-level macOS notebook launched on March 11, and Apple can’t keep up with demand. Orders placed today come with wait times of several weeks.
An analyst’s report shows Apple’s new MacBook Neo is even more affordable than it first appears. The total cost of ownership is about half that of comparable Windows PCs.
It may sound counterintuitive at first — how can a $599 Mac be half the cost of a $599 PC? — but the analyst showed that the typical lifespan of a Mac is so much longer than that of a Windows PC that the Apple model costs much less over time.
Google has begun internally testing a dedicated Gemini app for macOS. While the company continues to improve its AI tool almost every other week, the lack of a native Mac app limits its full potential.
A dedicated app will make Gemini more accessible and better integrated into everyday workflows on macOS.
Apple’s iOS 26.4 update includes a small line in its release notes that is drawing outsized attention. It promises “improved keyboard accuracy when typing quickly.”
While that might sound like a routine tweak, it appears to address a typing problem that has frustrated iPhone users for months.
Over the past few years, the artificial intelligence race looked like a story about infrastructure. Which company can build the biggest, most power-hungry data center, stock it with the most Nvidia GPUs and spend the most money? OpenAI, Amazon, Google, xAI — they’re all in a competition to build industrial-scale computing factories just to run the most powerful AI models. But it looks like developer Dan Woods just upended that story by running a data-center AI model on MacBook.
And that could mean Apple wins the AI race after all.
The MacBook Neo runs macOS on an Apple A-series processor with excellent performance, which has caused people to suggest that the Apple TV 4K could be hacked to run macOS and create a full-featured desktop computer for $129.
Or they propose Apple itself port macOS onto the video streamer and release it as a desktop that costs $200 or less.
Neither one is likely at all. Here’s why.