How much would you pay for a check signed by both Apple co-founders, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak? Factor in that it is Apple check No. 1. Got a figure in mind? Now double it. Your guess is probably still less than a collector paid for that item in a recent auction.
It went for a stonking $2.4 million — believed to be the highest price ever paid for a signed check at public auction.

This week on the Cult of Mac podcast: The second-gen AirTag finally arrives, and it packs some pretty awesome upgrades — although you’d never know by looking at it!

We discuss all the reasons we love AirTags in general, and Cult of Mac writer Ed Hardy joins us for his review of Apple’s upgraded tracking tag.

Also on the Cult of Mac podcast:

• A quick teardown of an AirTag 2 shows the massive redesign hiding inside the familiar circular form factor.
• Griffin explains Apple Music‘s killer feature that lets you easily upload your own tracks and sync them to all your devices. Take that, Spotify!
• A listener mentions my band, Those Darn Accordions, and that prompts a bit of a rabbit hole run through the band’s history (and surfaces a surprisingly popular ancient YouTube video of me sabering a bottle of Champagne back in the day at Wired.com).

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 live stream, embedded below.

For millions of Apple Watch owners, the Hypertension Notifications Feature available on recent models is a big leap in wearable health monitoring. It promises to alert users to potential high blood pressure before it leads to serious health problems. But how reliable are the alerts, and what should Apple users realistically expect?
I’ve had measurably high blood pressure for years. I wear Apple Watch 10, one of the models with hypertension alerts. And yet I’ve never seen one up close and personal. Apparently my meds are working!

StackSkills has a news flash for anyone who got a little too comfortable after high school: It’s not smart to stop learning. That’s especially true in this accelerated stage of the information age, where new tech skills are increasingly in demand.
The good news is that it’s easier than ever to catch up to the needs of today’s job market, thanks to resources like StackSkills. This vast platform for online education can help anyone chart a path to a new career. And lifetime subscriptions cost just $19.97 (regularly $600).

January 30, 1995: Apple Computer launches the Newton MessagePad 120, the first truly great device in an unfairly maligned product line.
Coming 18 months after the original Newton MessagePad, the upgraded PDA packs more power — and truly shines once Newton OS 2.0 rolls out.

Apple might be slow to jump on the AI bandwagon, but internally, the company “runs on Anthropic at this point.” Apparently, the company was also ready to rebuild Siri around Claude, but the deal fell through at the last moment. 
“Anthropic is powering a lot of the stuff Apple’s doing internally in terms of product development and a lot of their internal tools,” revealed Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman in the TBPN’s Technology’s daily show. 

“I am proud to say that we just had a quarter for the record books,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said during Thursday’s earnings call, before rattling off numbers that surprised Wall Street analysts — in a good way.
The highly successful quarter was also one for the stat geeks. Apple racked up several all-time highs during the quarter (technically Apple’s Q1 2026). From overall revenue (a new all-time high!) to customer satisfaction ratings (through the roof!), the numbers Apple put up during the 2026 holiday quarter will blow your mind.

If you’ve used iPhones and digital cameras for years, chances are older images in your photo library don’t quite hold up anymore — but an image upscaler like Aiarty Image Enhancer can help.
Early iPhone shots, low-light photos, scanned prints and older, low-resolution images often look soft, grainy or blurry on today’s large, high-resolution displays. Aiarty Image Enhancer, available for Mac and PC, is designed to solve exactly those problems.
It’s a focused, AI-powered photo enhancement application that prioritizes speed, simplicity and natural-looking results — without subscriptions or complicated editing tools. And for a limited time, you can get a great deal on it.

Apple CEO Tim Cook spoke publicly for the first time on Thursday about the collaboration with Google that will upgrade the Siri voice assistant with the Gemini AI. He emphasized that the new Siri will “maintain our industry-leading privacy standards.”
Cook also said the company will continue to develop its own artificial intelligence models, even as it’s using Google’s.

Apple broke all kinds of revenue records during the critical holiday quarter, the company said Thursday, including setting an all-time quarterly high of $143.8 billion. The shockingly good revenues led to sky-high earnings per share that blew past Wall Street’s lofty expectations. And Apple gave the iPhone much of the credit.
“Apple is proud to report a remarkable, record-breaking quarter, with revenue of $143.8 billion, up 16 percent from a year ago and well above our expectations,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook in a press release. “iPhone had its best-ever quarter driven by unprecedented demand, with all-time records across every geographic segment, and Services also achieved an all-time revenue record, up 14 percent from a year ago.”

After years of rumors, Apple finally unveiled the second-generation AirTag on Monday. At first glance, it looks identical to the original, but the similarities end there.
From improved tracking precision to a louder speaker, AirTag 2 builds on its predecessor in every way.

Apple just paid $2 billion for Q.ai, an AI company with technology that could dramatically enhance the Siri voice assistant. It’s a stealth-mode Israeli artificial intelligence startup that develops advanced technologies to improve human/computer communication beyond basic speech recognition.
It’s the second largest acquisition in Apple history.

January 29, 1990: Apple CEO John Sculley appoints Michael Spindler as the company’s new chief operating officer.

Nicknamed “The Diesel” on account of his work ethic, Spindler’s new job continues his upward trajectory at Apple. Three years later, he will become CEO.

Apple just gave new subscribers an extended opportunity to try its music streaming service, offering three months of Apple Music completely free. The promotion to get three months of Apple Music free — which runs through February 24 — greatly expands the standard one-month trial period.
The new offer coincides with Apple’s sponsorship of the upcoming Super Bowl halftime show with musical act Bad Bunny.

With the launch of Apple Creator Studio Wednesday, Apple also updated its suite of productivity apps otherwise known as iWork. That’s Keynote, Pages and Numbers, which were always free and are now “freemium.” Some features will only work for Creator Studio subscribers, but others work for anyone using free versions of the productivity apps.

Seven out of the ten bestselling smartphones in 2025 were iPhones, reports a market research firm, including all of the top four. But it’s not a Pro model that was the No. 1 seller, nor was it the cheapest. It was the base iPhone 16.
Those strong sales powered iPhone to the top of the global market overall. Apple outsold all rival smartphone makers last year, according to a separate report.

Spendify is a personal finance app that helps you track and plan your spending. The new AI tool turns a tedious and sometimes overwhelming task into something extremely manageable. It can even help you identify ways you’re unknowingly wasting your hard-earned cash.
With a lifetime subscription to Spendify, you get long-term access to tools that help you understand where your money goes and how to improve your habits. And the savings start now: Lifetime access to Spendify is on sale now for just $29.99 (regularly $180).

An AirTag 2 teardown video reveals Apple’s second-gen AirTag packs major internal changes. From the outside, though, the tracking tag looks identical to its predecessor. 
Internally, Apple has used a thinner PCB and revamped the speaker assembly to make it louder. The latter will also help avoid unwanted tampering with the tag.

Apple just launched the long-awaited new version of its AirTag. The upgraded tracking tag is easier to find, with much longer range when using either a Bluetooth or Ultra Wideband connection from your iPhone. It also includes a louder, shriller speaker.

I put the improvements in the AirTag (2nd generation) through real-world testing for this hands-on review.

The iPhone’s Live Captions feature generates subtitles of any media playing on your device or heard by its microphone. Powered by the Neural Engine in Apple’s custom silicon, the ability to convert words from music, videos and real-time conversations into text on the fly is a boon to many users in many situations.
If you’re hard of hearing, for instance, the ability to see instant captions on the screen is a game-changer. Or, if you don’t have headphones when you’re sitting in bed late at night and your partner is asleep — or you’re in any situation where you don’t want to make noise, like on the bus or in an office — you can turn on Live Captions to get subtitles.
The applications are endless and exciting. Here’s how to use Live Captions on your iPhone.

January 28, 1978: Apple Computer occupies Bandley 1, its first custom-built office, giving the company a bespoke business center to house its growing operations in Cupertino, California.
A full 15 years before 1 Infinite Loop, and almost four decades before Apple Park’s stunning “spaceship” HQ  landed, 10260 Bandley Drive in Cupertino becomes the first purpose-built, permanent headquarters for the newly founded company.

If you come across a live concert recording, a demo track or an indie song that’s not already in Apple Music, you can add it to your Apple Music library really easily. It’s simple to upload music to Apple Music and, in fact, you don’t even need an Apple Music subscription — just a computer and your iPhone.
Adding music to your library manually used to be the only way to listen to music on your computer, way back before the iTunes Music Store made paid downloads popular and Apple Music entered the streaming area. Even after 25-plus years, Apple still supports the feature — and thankfully so, because I use it all the time.
It’s the top reason why I don’t use Spotify. While Spotify technically supports custom music as well, it’s a convoluted and clunky process. On Apple Music, it’s dead simple to add your own tracks and only takes minutes. All you need is a Mac or a Windows 10 PC with iTunes.
Here’s how it works — keep reading or watch our quick video. 

Apple released significant updates to Final Cut Pro alongside the debut of Apple Creator Studio software bundle for creatives Wednesday. And in a new feature story, it showed how video director, dance choreographer and Blackpink collaborator Kyle Hanagami uses new AI-powered tools for video editing.

If you want a screaming-fast iPad Pro with a gorgeous, 13-inch screen, consider this refurbished M4 model. Released in 2024, it delivers the goods when it comes to working (and playing) at home, in the office or on the go.
Plus, it’s on sale for just $899.99 — while our limited inventory lasts.

Despite a steep rise in NAND and RAM prices, Apple will supposedly not increase iPhone and Mac prices. Instead, TF International analyst Ming-Chi Kuo believes Apple will take the hit to its gross margins to increase market share. 
The supply-crunch has already forced Apple to negotiate prices with its vendors every quarter, rather than the usual six-month cycle.