Zac Hall is a Senior Editor, covering Apple, apps, and AI. His work is regularly featured by Techmeme.
He joined 9to5Mac in 2013. He later served as Lead Editor from 2016 through 2020, before creating the Space Explored website.
In 2015, Zac began co-hosting 9to5Mac Happy Hour, establishing the format of the site’s premier podcast, which he hosted for eight years.
In 2018, he created 9to5Mac Daily, providing audio recaps of Apple and technology news each weekday. He also hosted multiple seasons of the 9to5Mac Watch Time podcast, a health and fitness-focused interview series.
Zac is based in the lovely Gulf Coast town of Ocean Springs, MS, where he lives with his brilliant kids and Nova, his loyal Cavachon rescue.
Contact: zac@9to5mac.com
In May, Lux Optics launched the all-new Halide Mark III pro camera app for iPhone. Today, Halide is back with its first update for iPhone 18 Pro, plus new features for all iPhone photographers.
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OpenAI has teased 20+ announcements as part of its DevDay 2026 event. The event will be streamed live. You can see everything announced today below.
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Anthropic is upgrading Claude Sonnet, replacing Sonnet 5 from June with Sonnet 5.5 as the best medium-sized model.
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Apple Watch Ultra includes a few more ways to customize your watch face than Series models. These include Ultra-only faces, colors and fonts, and a bezel-type complication. Apple Watch Ultra 4 goes even further, adding a new option in the bezel configuration category.
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Talking to ChatGPT is getting better in three ways starting today. OpenAI is rolling out a collection of improvements to how ChatGPT Voice mode works.
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Six days ago, Apple released iOS 27.2 developer beta 1, skipping over iOS 27.1 beta. Following yesterday’s developer beta 2 release, Apple has now issued the first iOS 27.2 public beta version, with the new iPhone Health app included. Apple has also turned on the ability to schedule and purchase labs through Quest Diagnostics from the new Health app in iOS 27.2 beta.
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9to5Mac is brought to you by CleanMyMac by MacPaw. With the release of macOS 27 Golden Gate, use CleanMyMac first to free up space, optimize your system, and ensure your new Mac runs at 100% on day one. Learn more.
macOS 27 Golden Gate is a huge upgrade over macOS 26 Tahoe, and not just because of the smarter design decisions. Just like iOS 27 for iPhone, the Mac adds a Liquid Glass appearance slider. This lets you dramatically change the look of your Mac across the system.
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Earlier this month, OpenAI released the first GPT-6 model with Astra. Now GPT-6 is expanding with new GPT-6 Sol and GPT-6 Luna models.
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Anthropic has released its latest AI model with Claude Opus 5.5. The new version arrives about two months after the previous Opus model upgrade, matching Anthropic’s previous upgrade cadence.
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Apple has released the second iOS 27.2 developer beta for iPhone. The update follows the release of iOS 27 to everyone. It also leaps over iOS 27.1, which Apple has shown as an iPhone Duo-focused release.
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It’s not every day that a new Apple TV app arrives for tvOS. Shopify just released Shopcast, bringing a dashboard for businesses to the big screen.
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Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4 include a new Health Sensing System that dramatically improves heart rate data. The new system also includes a new Theater Mode setting that you may want to enable.
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Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4 include a new fitness-tracking feature: live step tracking on the watch face. Alongside live heart rate data, it’s a surprisingly welcome and motivating change to the new hardware that I’m loving so far.
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In addition to the new M6 Mac mini (9to5Mac review), early impressions of the most powerful Mac Studio are out ahead of tomorrow’s release as well. Here’s what reviewers are saying about the upgraded M5 Ultra Mac Studio so far.
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Well, this is odd. The handwashing timer feature is currently absent from the new Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4 hardware.
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Apple has released Xcode 27.1 beta 1 for developers. This version specifically enables app development that targets the new foldable iPhone Duo.
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Meta’s new Muse AI agent app has taken the top spot on the free iPhone charts for the U.S. App Store, displacing OpenAI’s ChatGPT from the first place.
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Update: Nine days later, Muse now includes a Mac app. You can download it here.
Meta AI just launched a brand-new iPhone app called Muse from Meta. Similar to Grok Bot in presentation, Muse is a personal AI agent that handles tasks for you.
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9to5Mac is brought to you by CleanMyMac by MacPaw. With the release of macOS 27 Golden Gate, use CleanMyMac first to free up space, optimize your system, and ensure your new Mac runs at 100% on day one. Learn more.
macOS 27 Golden Gate doesn’t give the Photos app a dramatic redesign. Instead, Photos gains a surprisingly broad set of various improvements this year. These range from Apple Intelligence-powered editing, new ways to organize and sort your collection, better sharing tools, and much more.
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Apple has released the first developer beta of iOS 27.2, beginning the next round of iPhone software testing. Here’s what’s new in the update.
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Apple has released the first iOS 27.2 developer beta for iPhone. The update follows the release of iOS 27 to everyone on Monday. It also leaps over iOS 27.1, which Apple has shown as an iPhone Duo-focused release.
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Anthropic announced today that Claude Cowork is being merged with chat. This means Claude will drop from three to two modes: Claude Chat and Claude Code.
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AppZapper is one of the first Mac apps I bought when I switched from PC to Mac in 2009. Coming from Windows, OS X lacked an obvious solution for thoroughly uninstalling software.
The answer, of course, is dragging an app from the Applications folder to the Trash. But what about all the extra cruft that apps leave behind? AppZapper handled it.
This week, the app returned from a long hiatus to introduce a brand-new version of “the uninstaller Apple forgot” with AppZapper 3000.
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Apple Watch includes an all-new Siri app in watchOS 27. Unlike the iPhone and iPad versions, it’s a bit less intuitive to use in one way.
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