In iOS 27.2 beta 4, Apple changed the Apple Music app icon from white musical notes on a vibrant red background to similar black notes on a white background.
The reaction was immediate and overwhelmingly negative after the beta came out Tuesday. Apple Music fans slammed the change, with some calling it one of the company’s worst design choices ever.
October 13, 2006: Apple launches a limited-edition iPod nano (Product) Red Special Edition music player in collaboration with U2 lead singer Bono and activist/attorney Bobby Shriver, with 10% of profits going to fight AIDS in Africa.
It’s the first of many Apple philanthropic products. “We’re ecstatic that Apple is giving their customers the choice to buy a red iPod nano and help women and children affected by HIV/AIDS in Africa,” the U2 singer says in a statement.
Apple’s new Siri Remote adds a long-requested feature that makes it easier to track down the little controller when it goes missing… which you know it will. And you don’t have to buy the company’s new Apple TV 4K to get it.
The updated remote, announced Tuesday alongside Apple’s latest streaming box, adds an audible alert sound to make the device more findable. And it has Precision Finding, too.
The Siri Remote (4th Generation) is sold separately, so owners of older Apple TV models can upgrade to it.
Apple is making a big push in the smart home segment with HomeView. The smart home hub, introduced Tuesday, brings Siri AI, smart home controls and FaceTime to a dedicated display for your home.
But there’s more to HomeView than its headline features. From differences between the two models to extra installation costs and requirements for personal Siri requests, these are the things you should know before ordering one.
The new Apple TV 4K lets you ask Siri AI what to watch from across the room, no remote required.
The A19-powered box arrives November 13 for $299, making it $100 more expensive than the previous model’s starting price. It’s the first Apple TV 4K refresh since 2022.
The new Apple TV supports four-speaker surround sound, and it finally gets perhaps the most-requested feature ever: The new Siri Remote gets Find My — making a lost clicker a thing of the past.
Apple intends its new HomeView hub to be permanently at the center of a digital home. It’s intended to offer “entertainment, connection, and smart home management,” said the official announcement. It features a 7-inch screen and a built-in speaker system.
“Apple HomeView is designed to be shared by everyone in the home yet feel completely personal to each user,” said Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing, in a statement. “It recognizes your face to shift from a household screen to your own experience, fills the room with incredible sound, keeps you connected to the people who matter most with FaceTime, and makes it easy to control your smart home. And it’s powered by Apple Intelligence with Siri AI at its core, drawing on personal context from your iPhone to help you find what you need and get more done, all while keeping everyone’s information private and secure.”
The hub was announced Tuesday alongside a range of other smart home accessories.
There’s a fairly big gap between occasionally asking Claude a question and knowing how to make it genuinely useful at work. This Claude AI Professional Skills CPD Certification course bundle is on sale for $19.99 (regularly $147) and is designed to help close that gap with four courses and more than nine hours of training.
The HomePod mini 2, revealed Tuesday as part of Apple’s renewed push into the smart home, looks the same as its predecessor. However, the updated smart speaker comes in new colors and packs upgraded internals for an enhanced Siri AI experience.
“HomePod mini 2 brings together Siri AI, gorgeous new colors, and incredible audio,” said Kaiann Drance, Apple’s vice president of worldwide home product marketing, in a press release.
The new set-top box arrived Tuesday alongside the HomeView smart hub, the fourth-generation Apple TV 4K and the Apple Home Collection of smart home accessories.
Apple unveiled its Apple Home Collection, a handful of “recommended” smart home products produced in partnership with LG Electronics and Schneider Electric, during its “Welcome Home” event on Tuesday.
The new gear, including a door lock, temperature sensors and security cameras, work with Apple’s new HomeView smart home hub and give consumers an easy way to outfit their homes with trusted devices. The company played up ease of use and security in a bid to differentiate its products from the sea of similar products.
“Apple Home Collection makes it easy to choose smart home accessories with confidence,” said Matthew Costello, Apple’s vice president of hardardware engineering, in a press release Tuesday. “Working closely with industry leaders LG Electronics and Schneider Electric, we designed every accessory to work seamlessly with Apple Home, so managing your home is simple, reliable, and private.”
Apple’s long-awaited HomePod mini 2 and next-generation Apple TV 4K could debut on Tuesday, with leaks and rumors pointing to significantly smarter Siri capabilities and a collection of internal hardware upgrades.
They’ll apparently be part of a renewed push by Apple into the smart home market.
Here’s what we know about these products before the announcement.
October 12, 2011: Apple launches iCloud, a service that lets users automatically and wirelessly store content in the cloud and push it to their various devices.
iCloud’s arrival marks the end of Apple’s Mac-centric “digital hub” strategy — and ushers in an age of inter-device communication and non-localized files.
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Anyone hoping for an updated entry-level iPad that can handle Apple Intelligence should prepare for a bit of a wait.
Despite a flurry of new Apple products coming this month, the updated tablets reportedly won’t arrive until next year. But when they do, they should bring support for Apple’s latest AI features.
Update: The time for leaks and rumors is over — Apple’s smart home hub is now official. Read more:
Apple wants HomeView at the heart of your smart home
Apple appears ready to make a serious push into the smart home market with a new screen-equipped hub dubbed HomeView. It’s reportedly coming at a product launch event on October 13.
The device is for those who want to put the new Siri AI at the center of their home, as well as those who are serious about Apple’s HomeKit smart home accessories. Or both.
Here’s everything we know about Apple’s smart home hub in the days before it is expected to launch.
Apple signed a deal with Huxe, an AI-powered podcast generator, giving it the right to hire staff and license its technology.
The move signals Apple’s bigger AI audio plans for Apple Podcasts. But Apple isn’t buying Huxe outright, though the startup’s application is already gone.
Apple’s upcoming OLED iPad Mini will carry a significantly higher price tag than its existing $599 MSRP. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman believes the company will sell the tablet for as much as $799.
That would make Apple’s smallest iPad more expensive than the M4 iPad Air, which starts at $749.
October 11, 1995: Steve Jobs files the paperwork to float Pixar Animation Studios on the stock market.
A turning point in Jobs’ life, the Pixar initial public offering turns him into a billionaire. But things very nearly don’t turn out so well.
Update: The time for leaks and rumors is over — Apple’s smart home hub is now official. Read more:
Apple wants HomeView at the heart of your smart home
Apple will reportedly call its upcoming smart home hub the HomeView. Powered by an A18 chip, the display will focus on Siri and smart home control. It will also lack an App Store.
As previously reported, the HomeView will come in two versions: a countertop model with a metal speaker base and a wall-mounted model with a flat, square base.
More than 15 years after its debut, Siri finally feels useful beyond the basics. While iOS 27, iPadOS 27 and macOS 27 pack plenty of notable upgrades, Siri AI is easily the highlight. It can find buried information, understand what’s onscreen and get things done across apps.
From comparing PDFs to organizing travel bookings, here are some practical ways to put Siri AI to work on your iPhone, iPad or Mac.
This week on the Cult of Mac podcast: Apple’s about to make a big push into the smart home arena. We already knew about the impending launch of an intriguing new smart home hub, but the revelation that Apple is working with at least two other companies to produce new devices takes things to a whole new level.
The big question remains: How will Apple differentiate its smart home platform from everything else on the market? There’s plenty to discuss.
Also on the Cult of Mac podcast:
Listen to this week’s episode of the Cult of Mac podcast in Apple’s Podcasts app or your favorite podcast app. Or watch the video version, embedded below. (Be sure to subscribe and leave us a review if you like it!)
October 10, 1993: Apple ships its Macintosh Color Classic II, the last of the 9-inch compact Macs.
Also known as the Performa 275, the Color Classic II will eventually become something of a collector’s item, since Apple released it only in Canada, Asia and Europe.
By Jessica Kanzler, Cult of Mac Deals
Headway is a fun app that pulls insights from more than 2,000 popular nonfiction books and condenses them into brief summaries with all the key insights. It turns them into audio and text, so you can listen or read to absorb big ideas in just 15 minutes.
I reviewed the app, which is currently on sale at Cult of Mac Deals, and found it surprisingly helpful for burning through my to-read list. And a lifetime subscription to Headway Premium is currently on sale for just $49.97 (regularly $299.95) with code SAVE20.
If you purchase the iPhone Duo from the Apple Store, Apple will have a little surprise for you. Apparently, Apple retail stores can customize the foldable’s boot screen with the buyer’s name.
So instead of just a “Hello,” users will see a “Hello, [insert name]” when they turn on the device for the first time.
Apple’s Mac shipments fell in the third quarter, but figures from market research firms show that Apple is weathering a difficult period for computer makers far better than its biggest rivals.
Mac shipments dropped about 11% in the July-through-September period, but that is barely a blip compared to huge declines from Lenovo, HP and Dell. The result is that PC shipments worldwide plunged about 20% year over year.
Apple’s aggressive push to stop advertisers from tracking iPhone users is reportedly blocking one of the world’s biggest programmatic advertising platforms from displaying any ads in Safari on iOS 27.
Ad-buying platform The Trade Desk thinks its ads are being blocked by mistake and has asked Apple to rectify the situation. The Trade Desk and others could simply be caught in the crossfire as Apple continues to crack down on advertising vendors that try to track users across websites. Either way, it shows how much control Apple has over the ads on your iPhone.