For a company that’s long been known for its “my way or the highway” philosophy when it comes to design, some of Apple’s latest interface choices have abandoned that approach in favor of the realization that, well, change is hard. So, instead of throwing its users into the deep end, Apple has started more commonly letting them continuing using an older interface if it suits them.
Apple knows that the Camera and Photos apps are of paramount importance to iPhone users, and the changes it made to them for iOS 26 will serve its users well. In the case of Photos, it's rare but admirable for the company to change course based on user feedback. No, Apple didn't completely restore the old Photos interface, but a response to this criticism is still good to see.
As always with visionOS, it comes back to the long game. As long as Apple keeps pushing forward and building out its AR platform of the future, I’ll be confident that the company is on the right track. visionOS 26 offers robust evidence that the work remains ongoing.
I had assumed Apple never actually had working versions of those features—that they were just demoware. But the execs say that isn’t the case.
“We had some real software,” Federighi said. “We were able to demonstrate there and show what was coming, but it didn’t converge in the way quality-wise that we needed it to.”
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“Look, on the one hand, I would love to dish about my enthusiasm for our future plans, but that’s exactly what we don’t want to do right now to misset expectations,” Federighi said.
AI is important, Apple suggests, but instead of being a feature in its own right, what’s more important is how the new, clever stuff will be infused across the brand’s phones, tablets, watches and laptops, from now on. Before Monday, Apple looked like a company anxiously dealing with an onslaught of problems. Now it appears confident – even optimistic.
Maybe patience, progress, and forethought will make whatever AI features Apple does release actually worth it, or maybe AI phones are a fad, and Apple can rest easy knowing it didn’t divert all of its resources into pushing the wrong boulder up a hill. It’s hard to say what the future really has in store for AI and all of the devices it’s being shoved into, but if there’s one thing I can’t do, it’s rule Apple out of the equation. Maybe not caring isn’t the perfect way to bring you the most AI features in the shortest amount of time, but it may be the best way to bring you stuff you actually use.
From a user’s perspective, however, this is a distinction without a difference, relying almost entirely on the fuzzy boundary between software that works only for the purpose of a single filmed demo, and software that works so poorly as to effectively be the same. But putting this on the record will be important as Apple prepares to defend itself over allegations of false advertising. That is, I think, who this statement is for — not for me, you, the public at large — but for itself and, by extension, its shareholders.
"If you want to rewind all the way to the time we introduced Split View and Slide Over [in iOS 9], you have to start with the grounding that the iPad is a direct manipulation touch-first device," Federighi told Ars. "It is a foundational requirement that if you touch the screen and start to move something that it responds. Otherwise, the entire interaction model is broken—it's a psychic break with your contract with the device."
Mac users, Federighi said, were more tolerant of small latency on their devices because they were already manipulating apps on the screen indirectly, but the iPads of a decade or so ago "didn't have the capacity to run an unlimited number of windowed apps with perfect responsiveness."
Apple today announced a sweeping set of updates aimed at helping parents protect kids and teens online, as part of its broader push to make Apple platforms safer, more transparent, and more age-aware.
In a video posted to the Apple developer site this week, the company outlined its new EnergyKit framework, which allows developers to integrate energy data from Apple Home in iOS 26 and iPadOS 26 to reduce or shift the electricity usage of their devices to prioritize cleaner and/or less expensive energy.
With iOS 26, Apple is adding a new AlarmKit framework for developers that offer apps with alarm clocks and timers. AlarmKit provides system-level access to alarm functionality, which was previously reserved only for Apple's Clock app.
When playing any sort of media in iOS 26, there’s a fresh Lock Screen design for displaying that media’s artwork. Artwork is larger than before, taking a central focus.
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Album art gets a new fullscreen design, and it even animates with vibrancy depending on what you’re listening to.
At that point in time, YouTube was only months old, Twitter didn’t exist, and Facebook didn’t even have its news feed. The national media hadn’t covered the speech. Apple sent out no press releases. But Stanford published the transcript on its primitive website, and people began discovering it. I recently checked my inbox for June 2005 and found multiple copies sent to me from different mailing lists. As the weeks and months went by, more and more people found the speech. Berlin describes it as going “slow-motion viral.”
“The speech started to get talked about, how honest it was,” says Porter, the class copresident. “I would have meetings in Hollywood—I’m a TV writer—and people would see I was from Stanford and ask if I saw that speech that Steve Jobs gave.” Jobs himself seldom mentioned it; at least I never saw him quoted on the subject. He joked to one person that he’d bought it from CommencementSpeeches-dotcom. He responded to a thank-you note from the copresidents by saying, “It was really hard for me to prepare for this, but I loved it (especially when it was over).”
Six years later, something happened that would change the way viewers perceived the speech. On the podium Jobs had said that his cancer diagnosis and his surgery a year later had been the closest he had come to facing death, and that he hoped to have a few more decades. On October 5, 2011, after many months of fighting the cancer he told students he had beaten, Steve Jobs died.
Before there was Apple TV+, before iPhones and iPods and iPads, Apple was already keen to reach entertainment industry insiders, speaking to them as professionals and as proto-influencers.
Here’s a look at Apple’s evolution as a brand as seen through vintage ads from the pages of Variety from 1994 to 2001.
According to a new report from French website Numerama, Apple is concerned about the EU possibly forcing the company to tweak the feature.
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The uncertainty regarding the application of the Digital Markets Act is why Apple is blocking iPhone Mirroring in the EU. Even though the EU Commission currently doesn’t include macOS in its list of large online platforms that need to be regulated, Apple believes that could eventually change. And the company would not like the EU regulator to require the company to tweak macOS to make it possible to mirror Android phones in addition to iPhones.
For the same reason, Apple also doesn’t plan to make iPhone Live Activities and its Phone app available in the EU when macOS 26 Tahoe launches later this fall.
“F1” has been a passion project for Eddy Cue, the architect of Apple’s expansion into producing movies and TV shows. He’s an Apple veteran and racing buff who sits on the board of directors of Ferrari, Hamilton’s racing team. His dreams for the film are loftier even than a nine-figure opening weekend: “I hope that when most people go see the movie, they walk out wanting to be a race car driver,” says Cue.
In Cook’s view, “F1” is the perfect vehicle to test Apple’s power to affect culture with the soft power of a broad-appeal movie rather than through the hardware of its computers and smartphones.
So naturally, I did what any unnecessarily curious video engineer would do — I dove into the technical rabbit hole to figure out exactly how Apple pulled this off.
Barnes & Noble has updated its Nook app for iPhone and iPad with a new "buy on BN.com" button that redirects users to the company's website to complete e-book and audiobook purchases.
Making waves in the world of science and storytelling, Primary students are co-authoring a digital book exploring the many stages of the water cycle.
But this project is about much more than science and literacy – the Year 4 boys are using their iPads and the Apple Pages app to embrace the power of collaboration and technology.
The report’s authors caution that cycle tracking app (CTA) data in the wrong hands could result in risks to job prospects, workplace monitoring, health insurance discrimination and cyberstalking – and limit access to abortion.
They call for better governance of the booming ‘femtech’ industry to protect users when their data is sold at scale, arguing that apps must provide clear consent options rather than all-or-nothing data collection, and urge public health bodies to launch alternatives to commercial CTAs.
Okay, Apple, now that you've 'solved' multitasking on an iPad, time to solve portability on a MacBook. I want a Mac that is as portable -- light and thin and samll -- as an iPad or an iPad mini. And no, touchscreen is not a necessity, but if you can also throw in touchscreens, that will be a bonus.
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Thanks for reading.