Each morning I wake up and check my sleep score on my Apple Watch. And then I wonder if it’s doing me any good. It’s certainly adding stress and hassle to my day.
That’s why I’m thinking of turning it off. Maybe you should, too.
This week on the Cult of Mac podcast: Holy mackerel, Tim Cook really is stepping down from his CEO role at Apple! And it’s happening sooner than most of us thought. His replacement, John Ternus, sounds like a solid pick — a hardware guy with a long history in Cupertino.
Cook himself says he wants the four-month transition to be “a textbook succession plan, the best in the world.” So the big question is, what will this transition look like for Apple? We’ve got some thoughts. (Lots of ’em, actually.)
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.
April 25, 1990: Steve Jobs shuts down Pixar’s hardware division (yes, it used to have one!), ending production of the pricey Pixar Image Computer immediately.
Jobs sells the company’s hardware unit to Fremont, California-based imaging company Vicom Systems for a paltry $2 million.
The daily games hiding inside the News app are my favorite puzzles to play. Some are digital versions of classic games like crossword puzzles and sudoku. Others are entirely new.
All five games are available to all Apple News+ and Apple One Premier subscribers. Here’s how to play each of the daily word games in Apple News+ on iPhone. Check them out in this quick video.
iMessage effects can add extra meaning, emotion and fun to your texting. In Apple’s Messages app, you can add bold, italics, underline and strikethrough text, just like in a formatted document. You can even choose from a bunch of cool, animated effects, including full-screen blasts of lasers, confetti and fireworks.
Apple’s text message effects can make quite an impression. You can make congratulations more bombastic (to rejoice in someone’s finest moments). Or, you can use formatting and effects to convey sarcasm, stress and sorrow more clearly.
These text effects are fun and incredibly useful. Keep reading below or watch our video.
Apple rolled out version 1.8 of its Apple Invites app Thursday, bringing seven new features that make planning and sharing events easier than ever. The update, available on the App Store, is the second recent upgrade for the iCloud+-exclusive digital invitation service.
Apple TV picked up a pair of prestigious Peabody Awards Thursday for hit drama Pluribus and documentary Come See Me in the Good Light. People think of the awards as the Pulitzer Prizes of radio, TV and online media.
There’s a certain magic in watching someone squeeze maximum capability out of a beautifully spare workstation. While plenty of computer setups aspire to the look of a NASA mission control center — bristling with displays, peripherals and enough RGB to signal alien life — a different school of thought holds that the best setup is the leanest one. Fewer devices mean fewer cables, fewer distractions and more space to think. You can do a lot with a little.
April 24, 2015: The original Apple Watch launch means consumers, who endured a seven-month wait after the device’s unveiling at a keynote the previous September, can finally strap an Apple wearable onto their wrists.
Apple CEO Tim Cook describes the smartwatch as the “next chapter in Apple history.” Behind the scenes, however, the first Apple Watch launch is a moment long in the making.
Plug in the Mini Wireless CarPlay/Android Auto Adapter once, then pair it with your phone, and every time you start the car, you’ll enjoy a wireless infotainment experience.
That means no more plugging in your phone — a wireless CarPlay connection happens every time you start the car. And right now, the Mini Wireless CarPlay/Android Auto Adapter is on sale for just $34.99 (MSRP $59.99).
Apple Music Classical is an iPhone app specifically designed to deliver a great experience browsing and listening to instrumental music. Apple carefully curated its catalog of millions of tracks, tagging them by composer, work, movement, instrument, orchestra, artist and more.
Why does there need to be a separate app for classical music? Apple says it succinctly on its support page: Classical music “has longer and more detailed titles, multiple artists for each work, and hundreds of recordings of well-known pieces.” This app “is designed to support the complex data structure of classical music.”
This is how to discover, find, add and listen to music in Apple Music Classical.
★★★★☆
No patience for slow wireless chargers? Then you need to check out the Anker Prime Wireless Charging Station. It delivers up to 25W, and so can give an iPhone 17 a nearly 50% charge in half an hour. There’s even a fan to keep things cool.
At the same time, the accessory boasts charging mats for an Apple Watch and an AirPods wireless charging case. And it folds up for easy travel.
I put Anker’s sleek 3-in-1 fast-charger through its paces for this review. Here’s what I learned.
April 23, 2009: Less than a year after opening its virtual doors, the App Store reaches 1 billion downloads.
Peer-to-peer file sharing app Bump becomes the 1 billionth app to be downloaded. As a result of his purchase, 13-year-old Connor Mulcahey of Weston, Connecticut, wins Apple’s “1 Billion App Countdown” promotion.
He takes home an assortment of Apple products valued at more than $13,000, including a $10,000 iTunes gift card, a 32GB iPod touch, an Apple Time Capsule wireless router and a 17-inch MacBook Pro.
Apple Maps rolled out an immersive new experience for the Miami Formula 1 Grand Prix, giving fans a detailed, interactive look at the race circuit ahead of the May 3 event. And it’s part of a broader plan to cover races throughout the 2026 F1 season.
As the upcoming CEO of Apple, John Ternus is surely getting deluged with advice, and I do not have the hubris to tell him what he should do. But my decades of reporting on the tech business have shown me that there’s something he absolutely must not do … because it could ruin the company.
Do not ship anything before it’s finished. You’d think that would be obvious, but it’s a mistake companies make over and over. Even Apple has done it a time or two — and that includes with a product still in its lineup today.
Apple’s $599 M4 Mac mini is the latest casualty of the ongoing DRAM shortage. The machine is no longer available for purchase on Apple’s website.
It’s possible this is a sign that a new model with a faster processor is imminent. But for now, only the M4 Pro Mac mini is available, and with ridiculous wait times stretching into July.
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 $29.97.
Apple on Wednesday released iOS 26.4.2 to fix a bug that allowed messages deleted by a user to remain on the iPhone.
“Notifications marked for deletion could be unexpectedly retained on the device,” Apple said in its security notes about the update. “A logging issue was addressed with improved data redaction.”
Beyond that, it seems like a minor update that focuses on various bug fixes and incremental performance improvements rather than new features. Tablet users got iPadOS 26.4.2 at the same time.
Plus, those not yet willing to make the jump to iOS 26 got their own update — iOS 18.7.8 also appeared on Wednesday, along with iPadOS 18.7.8.
Anker just quietly did something no accessory maker has attempted before: It built its own AI chip from the ground up, specifically designed to run powerful neural networks inside tiny, battery-powered devices. It announced the chip, called “Thus,” on Wednesday and plans to release it on Anker Day (May 21) inside its earbuds.
If the chip delivers on its promises, it could fundamentally change what we expect from earbuds — possibly including Apple AirPods — and other devices.
“Every AI chip built to date stores the model on one side and performs the computation on the other,” said Steven Yang, Anker’s founder and CEO. “To ‘think,’ the device must shuttle these parameters back and forth many times per second for every single query. Thus brings the computing power to where the model already resides. The model never has to move again.”
If you know how to schedule texts on iPhone, you can make sure you never forget to send a reminder, birthday greeting or early morning message for someone in a different time zone. You can schedule a whole slew of texts up to a week in advance, with links, photos, attachments and more, using the iPhone’s Send Later feature.
This can save your bacon if you’re the type of person who forgets to text someone later. And it’s really easy to do, once you figure out how to use the somewhat hidden feature. Watch our quick video.
April 22, 2013: The world gets its first Apple car. Well, kind of. In reality, the iBeetle is a collaboration with German automaker Volkswagen that offers a car “stylistically linked” to Apple.
This means Apple-inspired colors, a built-in docking station for your iPhone, and a special app that lets you control the car’s features.
Apple briefly removed the popular calorie-counting app Cal AI from the App Store last week. The episode offers a clear message to developers everywhere, according to a new report: The company is still very much in charge of how apps handle payments — even in the wake of a landmark court ruling that loosened some of its long-standing rules.
Apple reportedly plans to make major upgrades to the iPhone’s cameras in the coming years, starting with the introduction of a variable aperture lens on the iPhone 18 Pro this fall.
But that’s just the start. The company eventually plans to utilize a bigger 200MP sensor on its primary camera, with a periscope telephoto lens for better image quality.
If you’ve ever tried to sketch on a tablet or jot down quick notes on your phone with a “meh” stylus pen, you know the frustration and disappointment that can bring. The Tinymoose Pencil Pro Ultra fixes all that.
For a limited time, it’s on sale for just $39.95, making creating on your iPad or Android tablet both effortless and affordable.
John Ternus, the Apple exec slated to become CEO in September, said Tuesday that the company is “about to change the world once again.”
Ternus, currently Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering, made the pledge to Apple employees during an all-hands meeting. During the talk, Ternus and retiring Apple CEO Tim Cook promised to work together to bring great new products and services to market.