One of the benefits to being part of the Apple ecosystem is the plethora of apps that work across all of Apple’s devices so that you can access them whether you’re sitting in front of a Mac, out and about with your iPhone or even strapping on a Vision Pro headset. Come on — somebody out there has to be wearing one of those things. This week’s look at interesting apps features four such multiplatform wonders that let you do everything from type with your voice, post on a social network or jot down random thoughts on at least two different […]

If you have at least the minimum iCloud+ 2 TB subscription, you can enable video summaries. The number of cameras you can activate (right) depends on your tier. If you have HomeKit-compatible security cameras, you may have heard that Apple was going to ship an Apple Intelligence upgrade with the version 27 operating system releases. Apple Home would now provide an analysis in words of what was happening in a clip, making it easier to search for things that had occurred, instead of “animal” or a person’s name. But it’ll cost you. Maybe more than you expected. Apple had said it […]

A new, but familiar, Strategery. Strategery was always one of our very favorite games in the early days of iOS. And by “we,” I mean large portions of the staff at Macworld, including both myself and Lex Friedman. Lex reviewed the app for Macworld, and we even gave it an award. It was a Hall of Fame iPhone game. Strategery—named for Will Ferrell’s made-up word during his impression of George W. Bush—was a take on the classic strategy board game Risk. Risk is a clunky game to play, with an awful lot of little plastic pieces and dice rolling. Strategery did […]

By now you’ve probably heard the promise of iOS 27: it’s a Snow Leopard-like year where Apple spent a lot of time not on big marquee features, but on smaller fixes and enhancements throughout the operating system. And that’s largely true—and largely to the benefit of the platform—but it’s also not the whole story. Because there is, of course, at least one major feature that comes to iOS 27 (and Apple’s other platforms) this year, and it’s a doozy: Siri AI. The result is an OS that feels like a marked improvement over its predecessor, in everything from design to performance […]

Last year’s macOS release, macOS 26 Tahoe, was a mixed bag. While it added a bunch of solid new productivity features, it also included a half-baked visual update that muddied the entire interface. While I chose to view the glass as half full and accepted the interface imperfections, I understand that a lot of people just gave Tahoe a pass rather than inflict a visual regression on themselves. No matter how full you think the (liquid) glass was, I have good news: macOS 27 Golden Gate is here, and it’s good. Not only has Apple addressed most of the visual problems […]

Apple holds an event, developers pay the price, and look who’s crawling back! Finally, we’ll know what today’s specials are At its “Surprise and shine” event this week, Apple unveiled a raft of updated products, including the new iPhone Pro and Pro Max, the Apple Watch Series 12, AirPods 5, some guy named “Ternus” and, in an absolute shocker that no one was expecting, a foldable phone. I know, right? Just completely out of the blue. Who… who knew? OK, if the iPhone Duo itself wasn’t shocking — having been the subject of rumors since the Nixon administration, a full...

New podcast: John Ternus’s role in this week’s Apple Event, and our first impressions of the iPhone Duo’s hardware and software stories.

The Internet’s Dr. Drang on the Live Rewind and Siri Recap features announced this week: The hoops Apple jumped through to avoid certain words is pretty funny. For example, in the discussion of Live Rewind, we learn that Audio from the microphone flows into the audio buffer inside the Secure Exclave on the S11 chip. You think your watch records the audio around you? No no no. The audio flows into the Secure Enclave, and flowing is definitely not recording because it’s a different word. Notably Apple chose not to use a very common synonym for “flowing” that would be...

(Anastasiya Badun/Unsplash) At my gym, all the signs are handwritten and friendly. In one section, a sign asks members not to drop their weights because there are downstairs neighbors.1 In the bathrooms, reminders to flush and wash hands. But throughout the gym, signs say—more directly—no live streaming. Other signs ask people to exercise consideration when recording their routines for themselves or their coaches to ensure nobody else is in their sight lines. Privacy in the gym is paramount to ensure everyone is not self-conscious and is comfortable. Siri Recap requires continuous audio capture, relying on Apple’s privacy protections and with no […]

“It’s just a big iPhone.” A description of the Pro Max? The iPhone 6? The iPhone 6 Plus? None of the above. Those old enough—cough, cough—to remember all the way back to 2010’s introduction of the iPad might recall this as a common dismissal of the first generation of Apple’s tablet. Which, to be fair, was kind of just a big iPhone.1 Not that there was anything wrong with that—in fact, it was a pretty successful elevator pitch for an entirely new product category. But if you tuned in for Apple’s announcement of the iPhone Duo this week, you may...

In his first event video since taking over as Apple CEO, John Ternus got a cheeky introduction from his predecessor Tim Cook before boldly referencing some classic Steve Jobs moments and setting the company’s most important product on a new course. I appreciated the video’s opening conceit, which was essentially a cinematic debate about what makes for a great opening scene, leading to Tim Cook narrating his own entrance to Apple Park—and then, in a twist, explaining that he’s not the main character of this story, it’s the other guy—namely Ternus. What a great, ego-deflating moment of support—and it stuck the […]

Apple’s events are always a deluge of information, delivered by smooth-talking presenters who are probably trying to hypnotize you with their soothing hand motions. So it can take a little bit of time after watching the presentation to come back to reality, and sift through the details. This year’s iPhone event1 was no exception. The company rolled out new Pro iPhones, two new Apple Watches, a new pair of AirPods, and, of course, the first folding iPhone. Having had a couple of hours to poke around and think about the slew of announcements, I’ve been mulling over the implications of...

We’ll all know soon enough, but kudos to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman for breaking some new details 12 hours before Apple’s event begins: Its device, called the iPhone Duo, will start at $2,000… The entry-level version will include 256 gigabytes of storage, with Apple offering higher-capacity versions that will take the price all the way up to roughly $3,000…. There will be a magnetic hinge system and support for the Apple Pencil stylus. The Duo will go on sale as early as October and come in white and dark blue. iPhone Duo is a good name. Not only does it make sense […]

You might be interested in knowing how to embrace Apple Passwords with a bear hug, leaving behind your current password manager. If you tried Apple’s Passwords app in the past and were disappointed, you should probably give it another try. The improvements Apple has made in the last couple of releases have brought it to what I consider parity with the most important useful features of well-designed third-party password managers. Despite that, Passwords is focused on—no surprise—passwords and password-like items: website logins, passkeys, and Time-based One-Time Passwords (TOTPs). Many password managers include a junk drawer of other kinds of structured material […]

General Motors has been saying for a few years now that it’s going to get rid of CarPlay and Android Auto on its EVs because, well, reasons. Well, well, well… maybe not. Ian Wright of CarBuzz writes: The Cadillac configurator is up for several 2027 models, and we spotted that the Lyriq still shows CarPlay and Android Auto being standard. The Lyriq is Cadillac’s first all-electric vehicle and a tech-forward vehicle that we think is becoming one of the best luxury EVs available. So, it piqued our interest that the GM brand was still including the things it was supposed to […]

The deed is done! John Ternus is now CEO of Apple! Memomento mori [extreme TV infomercial announcer voice] Do you suffer from insomnia, sleeplessness, or the condition known as “Snooze Deficiency Syndrome”? Do you lie awake staring at the ceiling, unable to lull yourself to unconsciousness, despite lately really preferring it to consciousness? Well, don’t worry! Apple’s outgoing CEO has you covered! “Read Tim Cook’s full memo to Apple employees on his last day as CEO” Today is my last day as CEO of Apple. Story checks out so far. This is a moment I always knew would come one...

This is more of a comment than a question. A few months ago I added a “Report a Typo” feature to Six Colors. The goal was to give people a simple place to go — sixcolors.com/typo — if they found a mistake on the website. That Google form inserts the information into a Google Sheet, and a script attached to the Google Sheet kicks off a simple automation that sends me a notification in a couple different places. This works pretty well. I’m using a very simple Google Apps script to fire off a webhook when there’s a new form submission. […]

Artificial Intelligence takes center stage in a few of the apps enjoying this week’s spotlight — and not the kind of AI that’s going to have you rolling your eyes or organizing a protest march against the nearest data center. No, these are actually useful AI features that take some of the busy work of daily life out of your hands so you can concentrate on other things. AI or no, we’re always looking for top macOS and iOS apps to feature here. If you’ve got something that fits that description, drop us a line at [email protected] with a brief...

Listen up, you primitive screwheads, Dear beloved team, Today marks the end of my remarkable—many would say “historic” and who would I be to argue?—tenure as Apple’s chief executive officer. Over the last 15 years, I’ve taken a piddling little tech company from a pair of nerds in a garage to the most profitable company in the world. Or, at least, that’s how I remember it. I’m sure you’ll miss me, and I’ll miss me too. As I think about where I’m headed, I can’t help but think about how much I’ve done for this company. I cast my mind...

Today Tim Cook is stepping down as Apple CEO and Phil Schiller is scaling back his involvement in the company’s events and his supervision of the App Store. I thought I’d find the oldest Tim Cook photo in my Photos library (what, do you not have numerous Apple executives in your People view?) and it’s from October 2008: Tim (left), Phil (right), and some other guy. This was from the post-event Q&A session, back when that was a thing! In the video of this event you’ll see that Tim Cook, then Apple’s COO, is asked by Steve Jobs to present “the […]

I know there’s no connection between my local area network and our house’s plumbing system, but when the faucet started running uncontrollably literally seconds after I fixed a network outage, I had to wonder: did we have a poltergeist? The jury is still out. But I can tell you that my hour of fruitless examination of router settings is to your benefit: you won’t have to do this when it happens to you. The weakest TP-Link As a guy known for Wi-Fi since the early 2000s, you might think my house is ablaze with wireless signals.1 Yes, it is: we have […]

Joe Lemire of Sports Business Journal has a detailed story about how MLB came to hire Jason Weingradt, the developer behind the amazing baseball app Mosaic: By drawing on public application programming interfaces (APIs) from the league and other sources, Weingradt built an app in TestFlight — Apple’s home for products still in beta — and shared his new creation, Mosaic, by posting on Threads and tagging #buildinpublic to solicit early adopter feedback…. That very same day, MLB Executive Vice President Kenny Gersh received a Slack message from colleagues alerting him to Mosaic and asking if the league’s legal team should […]

Jason Snell is a journalist, podcaster, and Jeopardy! contestant. The editor-in-chief of Macworld for 17 years, he currently runs the Apple-focused website Six Colors and appears regularly on several podcasts, including MacBreak Weekly and Upgrade. His latest podcast, Designed in California, details the 50-year history of Apple over 50 episodes. We talked to Snell about some of his favorite apps for streamlining his podcasting and writing workflows.

New podcast: Live from the backrooms in Anaheim, we talk Mac mini and Mac Studio and iPhone event.

Apple’s Friday Night Baseball made its immersive video debut on the Vision Pro Friday, with numerous live immersive cameras scattered around Yankee Stadium for the night’s game between the Yankees and the Red Sox. Apple has produced a lot of immersive video, including some sports documentaries and a set of live L.A. Lakers games, and it’s been clear that the makers of all that content have assumed that immersive video should be produced more or less like regular sports content: with lots of quick cuts, despite the fact that quick cuts in immersive video can be disorienting in a way that […]