Opinion pieces & commentary

The long-term promise of Apple Intelligence and next-gen Siri is that it will be able to access all our apps, and the data stored in those apps, to become massively more helpful.

ChatGPT has effectively given us a preview of this type of capability through its integration with a handful of Mac apps, and I’ve been putting it to the test …

Apple is in a tough spot. While the company is painfully behind the competition when it comes to getting a solid handle on AI development, it seems to be speeding up the timeline to release its first AI-powered smart glasses. That’s… quite a gamble.

Jony Ive and Sam Altman yesterday released a strong candidate for most frustrating video of the year: promising a completely new concept in AI hardware, but giving very little clue as to what it might be.

I transcribed the video to see whether I could spot any clues, in conjunction with other things the two have said. I think we can draw some pretty safe conclusions about what it’s not – and there are one or two clues about what it is …

Among all of the Apple Intelligence features announced at WWDC24 last summer, notification summaries are likely one of the more controversial ones. Users have noticed a number of inaccurate summaries, which has resulted in Apple tweaking the design of notification summaries, as well as disabling it for news stories.

While these summaries will never be absolutely perfect, there is one way Apple could improve the quality and accuracy of them, and I’d like to see them take this idea into consideration for iOS 19.

At last year’s WWDC, Apple Intelligence certainly stole the show. I personally believe iOS 18 still would’ve been a very substantial software upgrade, even without a single AI upgrade.

One of the large non-AI upgrades in iOS 18, besides the fully redesigned Photos app, is actually a subtle yet massive win for user privacy. Here’s why.

I won’t reprise the sad story of how Apple went from being at the forefront of AI technology with the launch of Siri in 2011 to being hopelessly left behind in 2025.

The company’s current approach appears to be to retain the Siri branding for simpler tasks, while using Apple Intelligence for the shiny new things – but there’s now an obvious problem with this …

9to5Mac is brought to you by Incogni: Protect your personal info from prying eyes. With Incogni, you can scrub your deeply sensitive information from data brokers across the web, including people search sites. Incogni limits your phone number, address, email, SSN, and more from circulating. Fight back against unwanted data brokers with a 30-day money back guarantee.

In iOS and iPadOS 18.4, Apple hit us with a little bit of a surprise feature: a new Food section in the Apple News app. While it’s only available for Apple News+ subscribers, it’s an extremely welcome addition. We’ll be delving into that here.

There’s a bit of a tech fad at present which might perhaps be better described as an anti-tech fad, epitomized by products like the Light Phone III and Minimal Phone.

The idea is that a less-capable, less-compelling smartphone will let us do the essentials without getting addicted to our device. But while I love the concept and aesthetics, most of those who’ve tried them quickly found they spent hundreds of dollars on something that’s more frustrating than calming …

By this point, we’re fairly sure we know what to expect from the iPhone 17 Air. Consistent reporting suggests that it will be an ultra-slim device, with around half the thickness of existing iPhones.

The big unknown is how many people will be willing to pay a premium for that sleek design – and Samsung’s latest phone may help answer that question …

Last October, Apple announced the M4 MacBook Pro. On the surface, it looks like yet another MacBook Pro spec bump. However, there are a number of key features that make it worth upgrading to, even if you already have an older 14″ MacBook Pro.

Apple SVP Eddy Cue yesterday suggested that we might not need an iPhone ten years from now. It echoes a report back in 2019, where the company’s execs were cited saying the same thing – also with a decade-ish time-frame.

Apple is absolutely right to take this possibility seriously. It’s the job of the company’s leadership to think long and hard about future scenarios, and there are four very good reasons why this possibility cannot be ignored …

Apple announced the redesigned Mac mini with M4 chip last October. It’s by no means a new product at this point, and its well over 6 months old. However, I think it may be one of Apple’s greatest gifts to up and coming creators, developers, and all sorts of creative professionals.

In 2020, Apple surprised a lot of people by re-entering a neglected segment of the smartphone market: small phones. With iPhone 12 mini, Apple did something fairly special, by squeezing all of the same technologies of the iPhone 12 into a 5.4-inch form factor. Unfortunately, it didn’t live for too long, but there may be a new opportunity to bring it back.

Apple has definitely built up quite a compelling ecosystem around the Apple Watch. Between all of its fitness challenges, activity rings, and competitions – Apple has certainly found a way to make exercise fun for a lot of people. The problem? Some people simply don’t like the form factor of a smartwatch.

When the US Supreme Court upheld the court ruling in the Apple vs Epic Games case, I said that the iPhone maker’s response was clearly made in bad faith, and was effectively giving the middle finger to the judge in the case.

The judge has now officially confirmed this view. She has not only directly called out Apple for ignoring her ruling, but said that a senior Apple exec lied under oath, and referred the matter for prosecution …

Yesterday gave us our best look yet at the upcoming iPhone 17 Air, in the form of a highly realistic dummy model shown alongside the iPhone 16 Pro.

Apple will doubtless employ a whole range of superlatives to describe the look of the device: thinnest, slimmest, sleekest … and it will of course be the <superlative>est phone they’ve ever made, and Tim will be sure we’re going to love it …

A Bloomberg report over the weekend suggested that we may see Apple smart glasses as an interim step along the way toward a full AR-based Apple Glasses product.

Essentially, it would be a copy of the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses – and as someone who uses those, my view is that an Apple version only makes sense if two key conditions are met …

I’m often skeptical about survey results. There are small-scale ones, where the claimed trends are actually within the margin of error for the sample size, and even in larger ones there’s still ample scope for the results to be way less meaningful than they might seem.

I have to say that Morgan Stanley’s survey on consumer attitudes to Apple Intelligence triggered my doubtometer, as the rosy picture it paints doesn’t seem a very good match for the current state of play …

I know, I’m writing about the Apple Watch and a subtle shade of blue while illustrating the piece with a dumb watch with very unsubtle blue face, but bear with me here.

A report yesterday suggested that the iPhone 17 Pro is going to be available in the Sky Blue, the name Apple gave to the subtle blue tint of one of the M4 MacBook Air options …

Apple will unveil iPadOS 19 at WWDC 2025 in June, and while most rumors focus on a new visionOS-inspired interface, a recent report revealed that Apple wants to make the iPad’s operating system “more like macOS.” This sounds too good to be true, and honestly I’m not expecting much. But there are some key changes that would already make iPadOS 19 more like macOS.

Some of you may not know this, but during a brief period from summer 2021 to fall 2023 – Apple made a battery bank.

Of course, since it’s Apple, it was MagSafe. This MagSafe battery pack had a number of interesting features and quirks, and ultimately it only stuck around for two years. However, thanks to an interesting new Apple trend, I think it’s plausible that it comes back – but not as an Apple product.