Apple’s iOS 27 developers have reportedly been tasked with bringing to iPhone a feature many users have asked for, and every one actually wants. And it’s not AI. No, it seems the focus of the next major upgrade will be on removing bugs and improving the performance of the operating system.

The same supposedly goes for the next major version of macOS, iPadOS and other Apple OSs.

This week on Cult of Mac’s podcast: The latest rumor about Apple CEO Tim Cook‘s retirement says he could step down as early as next January. We discuss the likelihood of that, and Apple’s succession plans, as we debate the company’s future.

Also on The CultCast:

• Soon, iPhones will let users trigger voice assistants other than Siri (at least in some countries).
• It sounds like Apple might kill the Mac Pro. We pour one out for the distinguished line of high-powered computers — but recognize that maybe their time has come.
• Against all odds, the iPhone Pocket is a hit! Time to eat some crow.
• You won’t believe what London phone thieves do when they find out they’ve got an Android on their hands.
• And finally … we marvel at some super-high-end Apple setups.

Listen to this week’s episode of The CultCast 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.

Whether you’re shopping for an Apple aficionado who still treasures their original iPod or the productivity ninja who lives and breathes the latest iOS updates, finding the perfect geeky gift can feel like searching for a needle in a digital haystack. Fear not! We gather some of the most ingenious, innovative and downright cool gadgets that’ll make any Apple user’s heart skip a beat. 

From retro-inspired accessories that pay homage to Apple’s legendary design heritage to cutting-edge smart home integrations that would make even Tim Cook jealous, these gifts bridge the gap between nostalgia and innovation. Each selection celebrates the unique blend of form, function, and pure geek appeal that defines the Apple ecosystem. And return to this post, because we’ll keep adding to it. 

November 22, 2005: Two-and-a-half years after opening its virtual doors, the iTunes Music Store enters the list of top 10 U.S. music retailers. While iTunes sales numbers can’t yet match the selling power of established retail giants like Walmart, Best Buy and Circuit City (or fellow tech company Amazon), this milestone nonetheless represents big news for Apple — and digital music distribution as a whole.

Stuck using an older version of Microsoft Office? This offer gets you a lifetime license to Microsoft Office Home and Business 2021 for Mac for just $49.97. With a low one-time payment, you can bid farewell to Microsoft 365’s pesky recurring subscription fees. You’ll never need to pay again for Microsoft’s widely used software for work and school.

And if you need Microsoft Office Professional 2021 for Windows, you can secure a lifetime license for even less: just $34.97.

Phone addiction is real. Constant iPhone use can literally change the makeup of your brain. Sure, people waved similar panic flags about the television, the radio and even the novel, but those were easily left at home. You carry the internet with you, and it’s constantly blasting a firehose of content, everywhere you go.

Luckily, you can make your iPhone less addictive.

If you feel the impulse to unlock your iPhone at every empty moment, or scroll through an app when you feel like you should be getting to bed, here are my tips for making your iPhone a bit more boring. And that, in turn, will help you curb your phone addiction.

The newly upgraded Pebblebee Clip 5 Bluetooth tracker tag sends out louder alerts, and its built-in LEDs got brighter. That should help it compete with Apple’s AirTag, as both use the same Find My network.

Plus, it has bonus features, like one that helps you find your iPhone.

I put the accessory through real-world testing — here’s how it came out.

Retired secret assassin Dan Morgan (Mark Wahlberg) and his now-the-wiser wife Jessica (Michelle Monaghan) lead the Morgan family to Europe for the holidays, only to find a gun-toting Irish villain from the past — played by English actor Kit Harington (Game of Thrones) — haunting them. And by “haunting” we mean trying very, very hard to rip off and probably kill Dan. It’s Apple Original Films’ first sequel, The Family Plan 2, and it’s now streaming November 21 on Apple TV, just ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday.

Reviews so far suggest it could be perfect for that holiday down time. The Hollywood Reporter calls it a “dumb-fun sequel that clears a low bar.” The New York Times says it’s a “better executed, equally goofball sequel about a family’s tangles with organized crime.” But some reviews get a little more Grinch-y, with Collider calling the film “lackluster” and Screen Rant fuming that it’s “mind-numbingly boring and unfunny.” But still, gathering in front of the screen could be better than talking to certain relatives, right?

The 2026 AI Content Creation Lifetime Subscription Bundle combines two powerful tools that help you write, edit and generate content (including voiceovers) faster: WordPop AI and SpeakBreez. 

Paired together, they will make quick work of your creative efforts. And for a limited time, you can get a lifetime subscription to both for just $39.99 (MSRP $2,070).

November 21, 1985: Following Steve Jobs’ departure, Apple comes close to signing its own death warrant by licensing the Macintosh’s look and feel to Microsoft. The Apple-Microsoft deal — struck by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Apple CEO John Sculley — comes hot on the heels of the Windows operating system’s release.

The pact gives Microsoft a “non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, nontransferable license to use [parts of the Mac technology] in present and future software programs, and to license them to and through third parties for use in their software programs.”

Oh, boy!

Apple’s tiny yet powerful M4 Mac mini is an amazing deal at any time, and a sale on the desktop computer makes it an even better value. You can get the latest model with 16GB of unified memory and a 256GB SSD for only $479. That’s a full 20% off the list price.

Configure the Mac mini with an M4 Pro or more memory and you can get it starting at $1,199, which is $200 below the usual cost.

Spotify just made it easier to import your music library from other streaming services. And you can do this directly from its mobile app. 

The company has partnered with popular third-party service TuneMyMusic to integrate this functionality into its app.

In a rare AirPods Max deal, both Amazon and Best Buy offer a $120 discount on multiple colors of Apple’s premium over-ear, noise-canceling headphones with USB-C charging.

This is one of the lowest prices we’ve seen — you can’t knock picking up a pair of AirPods Max for just $429.99. Especially considering we don’t see discounts on them all that often.

You can share passwords on iPhone automatically with your entire family, so you don’t have to reuse the same password everywhere or let everyone in your family know when a shared password is changed.

Setting up this feature is easy and saves the hassle of being texted “hey I can’t get into Amazon, what’s that password again?” and “I need you to send me the code.” When you set up shared passwords, two-factor authentication and passkeys are shared, too.

It’s a huge time-saver, and highly recommended. You can keep reading below or watch our quick video.

Sharing holiday pictures with the whole family just got easier. Google found a way to make Android’s Quick Share feature cross-compatible with Apple AirDrop. This means Android and iPhone users can wirelessly transfer images and other files between their handsets.

The feature was announced Thursday, and currently only works with a few Android handsets, but Google promised wider availability is in development.

An AirPods Pro 3 deal whacks the price of Apple’s excellent noise-canceling earbuds down to just $219.99. That’s a 12% discount off the upgraded earbuds — the best deal yet.

They bring  new features including a heart rate monitor, revved-up audio quality and redesigned ear tips for better active noise cancellation. Plus, like the previous model, they can even function as clinical-grade hearing aids.

Make no mistake: These are the best wireless earbuds you can buy for your iPhone, Mac and other Apple gear. Nothing can match how seamlessly AirPods integrate with Apple devices. And this deal offers a discount off the AirPods Pro 3 list price of $249.

Apple Music crowned rapper Tyler, The Creator as its 2025 Artist of the Year on Thursday, honoring the hip-hop innovator’s remarkable creative output and cultural influence over the past 12 months. With streaming minutes numbering in the billions, the guy gives new meaning to “off the charts.”

This year has been Tyler’s most successful to date across Apple Music’s platform. Between November 2024 and October 2025, fans worldwide streamed his music for more than 4.5 billion minutes, marking career highs in plays, listeners and total listening hours on the service.

Apple is kicking off the holiday shopping season with a Black Friday promotion: from November 28 through December 1, customers who purchase select Apple products will receive an Apple Gift Card worth up to $250.

While that sounds sweet, you might want to shop elsewhere.

November 20, 2007: In a milestone for iTunes movie distribution, Purple Violets becomes the first feature film to launch exclusively on Apple’s platform.

A romantic comedy directed by Edward Burns, Purple Violets stars Selma Blair, Debra Messing and Patrick Wilson. With limited offers from Hollywood’s traditional players, the filmmakers pin their hopes on iTunes distribution as an alternative way to get their movie in front of viewers.

In what may be the strangest twist in the ongoing smartphone wars, London phone thieves have developed a strong brand loyalty to iPhone. Some phone thieves return Androids, literally giving the handsets like Samsung phones back to their victims, according to a new investigation. Now why would they do that? Well, it’s mainly about economics. And good taste, of course. 

We.inc is a no-code website builder that offers numerous perks — and an affordable lifetime subscription. It’s one of the cleanest, fastest ways to build, launch and manage a website right from your Mac, iPad or iPhone, without needing to know anything about HTML or Python coding.

This deal on We.inc’s Unlimited Plan lets you build endless websites, gives you AI chatbot access, and includes a handy Social Media Suite that makes it easy to schedule posts across the most popular platforms. And you can get the whole thing for just $149.99 (a 92% savings off the MSRP of $1,899).

Finding good AI tools isn’t the problem. Even the free version of ChatGPT can do a lot. The real frustration is that if you want good results for generating copy, creating images, transcribing text and doing a myriad of other AI tasks, you often need a whole pile of subscriptions, and those costs add up. The alternative is to get an all-in-one tool that brings top AI models together in one interface. Enter 1minAI.

The major benefits of 1minAI are organizational and financial. It gives you access to ChatGPT, Gemini Pro, Llama, Mistral AI and more. So you get all your AI tools in one place, and you don’t need to pay for a subscription to each one separately. For a limited time, you can get a lifetime sub to 1minAI for just $24.97.

Love the convenience of 3-in-1 wireless chargers for iPhone, Apple Watch and AirPods — but wish they were faster? Well, Ugreen joined the early wave of Qi2.2 chargers with it MagFlow 3-in-1 Magnetic Wireless Charger. And that means it leaps from 15 watts (Qi2) to 25W (Qi2.2) of charging power for late-model iPhones, which makes a big difference in charging speed. And with this Ugreen MagFlow charger deal, you can get $40 off right now on Amazon. 

November 19, 2013: Apple gets final approval from the Cupertino City Council to proceed with building a massive second campus to house the iPhone-maker’s growing army of workers in California. Regarding the new Apple headquarters, Cupertino Mayor Orrin Mahoney issues a simple message: “Go for it.”

However, the massive structure — with an innovative circular design that will earn it the nickname “the spaceship” — remains years away from opening, despite Apple’s ambitious schedule.

In several states, Apple’s state ID initiative enables iPhones and Apple Watches to hold a digital copy of the user’s driver’s license, in the same way these devices store credit cards and airline tickets. And across the United States, you can create an Apple Digital ID based on your passport that can get you through some airport security checks. 

The day when an iPhone can completely take the place of an old-fashioned wallet remains years away, but it’s a goal Apple is working toward. Apple Pay is making progress on replacing credit cards, you can put airline tickets in the Wallet app, and the same goes for loyalty cards.

But no wallet is complete unless it can hold an ID. And that’s where Apple’s digital ID initiative comes in. Here’s what you need to know to add your driver’s license, state ID or federal passport to your Apple Wallet.