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9to5Mac Daily: April 28, 2026 – Apple ‘Ultra’ rumors, more

9to5mac daily podcast

Listen to a recap of the top stories of the day from 9to5Mac. 9to5Mac Daily is available on iTunes and Apple’s Podcasts appStitcherTuneInGoogle Play, or through our dedicated RSS feed for Overcast and other podcast players.

Sponsored by Bitwarden: Make your life easier with Bitwarden, featuring a secure, open source password manager with end-to-end encryption and seamless autofill across all your devices.

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Pedometer++ 8 brings friendly design refresh and Expedition Mode to Apple Watch

Pedometer++ has logged a lot of miles since first unlocking step tracking on the iPhone 5s in 2013. Nearly 13 years of updates later, version 8.0 arrives with a redesigned Apple Watch experience that includes an all-new Expedition Mode. Pedometer++ also touts a “highly-usable workout picker” for Apple Watch users frustrated by watchOS 26’s Workout app.

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Deals: M3 iPad Air up to $300 off, 24GB/1TB M5 MacBook Pro $250 off, M5 MacBook Air, AirPods, more

Today’s 9to5Toys Lunch Break is headlined by Amazon delivering MacBook Neo as early as tomorrow from $590 and the ongoing AirPods Pro 3 deal, but we also have some serious clearance deals live on M3 iPad Air 1TB M3 iPad Air $300 off and the 11-inch 512GB at $250 off. We also have Apple’s 24GB/1TB M5 MacBook Pro at best price of the year ($250 off) and the most affordable new M5 MacBook Air model back to one of the best prices ever (nearly $150 off). Head below for a closer look.

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Apple paid $1.2M to privately hire police to protect its San Francisco stores – Wired

Apple paid $1.2M to privately hire police to protect its San Francisco stores – Wired | Stock photo shows a police officer photographed from behind

A new report says Apple paid more than $1.2 million in one year to privately hire police to protect three of its San Francisco retail stores. The payment was said to have been made through a private security company.

San Francisco allows private companies to pay police officers to protect their shops and offices, and the report says that many tech companies take advantage of this …

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Hands-on: Satechi CubeDock packs Thunderbolt 5 and NVMe storage in a Mac mini-like design [Video]

Thunderbolt 5 debuted in September 2023. It was introduced as the new Thunderbolt standard that would slowly begin to replace Thunderbolt 4. It entered the scene, and we saw a big jump forward in bandwidth, display support, and overall capability. But what I noticed is that it was relatively slow to roll out, and the products we saw that did implement Thunderbolt 5 only did that. They just switched from Thunderbolt 4 to Thunderbolt 5 and shipped the same product otherwise. So when I saw Satechi announce some actual changes and improvements to their Thunderbolt 5 CubeDock, I had to check it out. I have used it for over two weeks, and this is what you should know.

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The OpenAI smartphone will fail, but it’ll be good for iPhone users

The OpenAI smartphone will fail, but it'll be good for iPhone users | Photo shows a modern smartphone on a bright yellow background

The past few days have seen conflicting views from AI companies about the future of smartphones. Perplexity thinks AI will only benefit iPhones, while OpenAI reportedly thinks its own smartphone can render them obsolete.

I would bet very heavily that the OpenAI smartphone will either never materialize or will be a commercial failure, but I still think the attempt is good news for iPhone users …

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This 20th Anniversary iPhone rumor is speculative but persuasive

This 20th Anniversary iPhone rumor is speculative but persuasive | Image shows an abstract glass visual

Former Apple design chief Jony Ive famously prioritized sleek aesthetics over almost everything else, and there was widespread agreement that he sometimes took this a little too far.

However, his long-term vision of the future of the iPhone as a single slab of glass has persisted beyond his tenure, and a new post does seem to present a persuasive view of what we might expect from a 20th Anniversary iPhone next year …

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Here’s why the Apple Ultra rumors make sense to me

Here's why the Apple Ultra rumors make sense, for company and customers alike | Image shows the Apple logo embedded into a rounded glass block

A report yesterday suggested that we may be seeing a succession of Apple Ultra products, including the upcoming folding iPhone and an M6-powered MacBook. So far, of course, we’ve only seen the branding used for an Apple Watch.

It may potentially be pointing to a new tier of Apple products across almost the company’s entire range of devices, and to me that would make sense for both the company and its customers …

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Apple @ Work Podcast: Securing mobile apps in the age of vibe coding

Apple @ Work is exclusively brought to you by Mosyle, the only Apple Unified Platform. Mosyle is the only solution that integrates in a single professional-grade platform all the solutions necessary to seamlessly and automatically deploy, manage & protect Apple devices at work. Over 45,000 organizations trust Mosyle to make millions of Apple devices work-ready with no effort and at an affordable cost. Request your EXTENDED TRIAL today and understand why Mosyle is everything you need to work with Apple.

In this episode of Apple @ Work, Alan Snyder from NowSecure joins the show to talk about MARI and the risks of LLM-generated code in mobile apps.

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Apple accused of discriminating against unionized Towson workers [U]

Update, April 28 1:12 a.m. ET: Apple reached out to 9to5Mac with more information, which you can find below the original post.

Following Apple’s decision to close its first-ever unionized store, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM Union) has filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board. Here are the details.

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9to5Mac Daily: April 27, 2026 – iOS 26.4.2, more on Ternus and Cook 

9to5mac daily podcast

Listen to a recap of the top stories of the day from 9to5Mac. 9to5Mac Daily is available on iTunes and Apple’s Podcasts appStitcherTuneInGoogle Play, or through our dedicated RSS feed for Overcast and other podcast players.

Sponsored by Bitwarden: Make your life easier with Bitwarden, featuring a secure, open source password manager with end-to-end encryption and seamless autofill across all your devices.

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