Opinion pieces & commentary

Wow. After Samsung had a seven-year head start on Apple in the foldables market, the company really had to live up to its ethos of waiting until it could do a far better job than everyone else, and boy did it deliver with the iPhone Duo!

It was abundantly clear that Apple had thought through every detail of what a foldable iPhone needed to be, and has taken advantage of every benefit the form factor has to offer …

It was widely expected that the first foldable iPhone set to be launched later today would be named the iPhone Ultra. However, a report yesterday said that the device will instead be called the iPhone Duo.

If accurate, it’s an interesting development as it might potentially point to the company reserving the Ultra suffix for a completely different future model …

There have long been reports and rumours about Apple working on a foldable clamshell device that is either an iPad, a Mac, one of each, or a hybrid of the two.

A recent report said that although this was once a priority for new CEO John Ternus, the project had been cancelled – but I don’t think that’s entirely accurate …

There were two reports in the last few days indicating different routes for Apple to make more money by boosting Services revenue.

In my view, it should absolutely do the first of these, but not the second – and it appears Phil Schiller may agree …

Last year, Apple completely reinvented multitasking on the iPad, with the introduction of windowing in iPadOS 26. At first, this meant the removal of the simpler version of multitasking, Split View and Slide Over. Those features did eventually return, but at a cost – they required you to use the clunky new windowing system. I was hoping iPadOS 27 would improve this, but it didn’t.

In general, we’re not expecting the iPhone 18 Pro to be a significant upgrade over its predecessor. Indeed, if you currently have an older iPhone there are arguments for buying the iPhone 17 Pro ahead of next week’s launch.

Of the few upgrades we are expecting, the biggest one on paper is going to be a variable aperture lens for the primary camera. But will this make a significant difference in reality … ?

Bloomberg carries a piece noting the astonishing gains made by Apple stockholders during the time when Tim Cook was CEO. The cumulative gain was 2,275% – or a total return of 2,736% when accounting for dividend payments also.

The site suggests this will make him a tough act to follow, but my own view is that new CEO John Ternus doesn’t have to emulate Cook’s management of the company …

Apple surprised many when it quietly announced updated Mac mini and Mac Studio models shortly before its September event. We would normally have expected these announcements to be part of that event.

One strong theory is that the company may be making a lot of big announcements in its ‘Surprise and shine‘ keynote, and therefore wanted to get these updates out of the way beforehand. But a new report presents another theory …

A report yesterday suggested that Apple considered making a special version of the Apple Pencil for the upcoming iPhone Ultra before deciding against it.

Bloomberg suggests that there are three reasons behind this decision, one of them being a desire not to conflict with the position adopted by Steve Jobs when launching the original iPhone. However, this was almost certainly not the deciding factor …

I recently observed that Apple appeared to have abandoned Cinematic mode, and a video experiment perfectly illustrates my frustration at this fact.

That’s not because the feature is bad, but rather that it comes so close to being good enough for real-life use that it’s hard to see why Apple hasn’t taken advantage of the massive increases in power between the iPhone 13 on which it launched and the latest iPhones. Let me show you what I mean …

When we ran a poll last month, the overwhelming majority of 9to5Mac readers agreed that Apple should exit the ad business.

Ads have now landed in Apple Maps in the US and Canada, and my view is that they are every bit as bad as expected …

Earlier this month, Google unveiled its new Pixel 11 lineup. The phones themselves were rather similar compared to the previous Pixel 10 lineup, though they offer a few delightful quality of life improvements. One of those is a new set of camera processing options – allowing you to have far more control over what your photo will look like.

On the cusp of the iPhone 18 Pro release, I’m hoping Apple offers something similar to this.

As someone who writes for a living, you would correctly guess that I’m wholeheartedly in favour of allowing AI-generated text to be detectable and marked as such. There’s just a ridiculous amount of AI slop out there, and an “AI content” label means I don’t need to waste my time reading any of it.

However, Anthropic has just announced that it’s complying with an EU initiative to have Claude watermark AI-generated text, but doing so in a particularly perverse manner …

Over the years, Apple has only added more and more customization to iOS. First, we got all of the lock screen personalization back with iOS 16. That was followed up with icon color tinting in iOS 18, clear icons in iOS 26, and a full-on Liquid Glass slider in iOS 27.

The iPhone has become more and more individualistic as time has gone on, and that’s a great thing. Since we can already tint our icons on our home screen – why not extend that to the rest of the operating system?

iOS 27 Beta 5 includes references to an upcoming new feature to allow Apple to authenticate iPhone photos.

Not many iPhone users will need to use this for reasons we’ll get to in a moment, but the move is just the start …

Yesterday saw two conflicting reports about next year’s 20th anniversary iPhone, said to embody Apple’s long-term vision of “a single slab of glass.”

There have already been contradictory reports about exactly what we should expect, but yesterday’s disagreement was the biggest yet …

A Bloomberg report yesterday suggested that we could see a pretty dramatic shake-up in a future Apple Watch lineup.

In particular, it suggested that the company was exploring the possibility of one or more models with a round rather than square form factor …

Earlier this summer, Apple dramatically increased its prices as a result of the ongoing memory crisis around the globe. Things like iPad Air increased from $599 to $749, M5 MacBook Pro from $1699 to $1999, and Apple TV from $129 to $199. That’s just a few examples, but the point is, these price hikes are steep.

It leaves the question – will Apple work on major improvements to make its products more appealing at these new prices?

We’ve had iOS 27 in our hands for about two months now. Of course, it’s a beta – and the public release won’t be hitting for another 4-6 weeks. That said, despite the fact that I’ve been running a beta on my phone for the past two months, I can’t say I’ve really thought much about it. It just… works.

When Apple unveiled the iPhone 13 back in 2021, it made a huge deal over a headline new feature, Cinematic mode. This is the video equivalent of Portrait mode, allowing you to select a focus point and blur the background.

Portrait mode has improved dramatically in successive generations, but the same cannot be said of Cinematic mode. The company appears to have completely lost interest in the feature, and although that’s understandable in one way, I would argue it’s a big mistake …

Even Apple CEO Tim Cook has acknowledged that Vision Pro is a niche product. I’ve argued in the past that it’s an essential step along the way to a more affordable and consumer-friendly Apple Glasses product.

But it’s also worth noting that sometimes niche products can make a huge difference within specialist fields, and a new surgical study provides a very clear example of why it matters to patients and surgeons alike …