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
Apple reportedly wants to buy Chinese RAM for its products from not one but two different firms. The move would likely require permission from the United States government.
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Apple isn’t the only company with AI-focused products in the works. According to a new report, SpaceX has an artificial intelligence hardware prototype that’s “slimmer than an iPhone” in development.
Update: Musk has denied the report, tweeting that it is “utterly false.”
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Baseball season is well underway, and the MLB app just gave fans a new way to keep up with real-time scores and more.
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June 30, 2026: Personal finance is now available to ChatGPT Plus customers in the U.S., expanding the feature from OpenAI’s $100/month plan to the $20/month version. Original story from last month is below.
OpenAI is catching up with some competitors and offering new personal finance features inside ChatGPT. The new personal finance experience is rolling out starting today for some subscribers.
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Anthropic is upgrading Claude Sonnet, replacing Sonnet 4.6 from February with Sonnet 5 as the best medium-sized model.
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Anthropic just launched a brand-new desktop app called Claude Science. The new app joins the main Claude app on the Mac, which includes Claude AI, Cowork, and Code.
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Remember Clawdbot, the effort to put AI models to work as agents? Clawdbot eventually became OpenClaw and gained OpenAI’s support. Now there’s an official iPhone (and Android) app for OpenClaw for the first time.
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Earlier this month, SpaceX (which includes xAI) purchased the agentic coding firm Cursor. Today, Cursor has released its first iOS app.
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June 30, 2026: A day later, public beta versions are now available as well.
While iOS 27 is very much the new focus for pre-release software, Apple is still preparing iOS 26.6 as the next iPhone update. Apple has released the third iOS 26.6 developer beta. iOS 26.6 beta has been in testing since the end of May.
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OpenAI just teased an upcoming collaborative hardware project that’s set to launch in July. From the looks of it, OpenAI may be teaming up with a popular keyboard maker to release a Codex-branded input device.
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The Financial Times reports that Apple is seeking clearance from the Trump administration to purchase memory chips from a banned Chinese company. The move would help it meet demand for product manufacturing during the ongoing global memory supply shortage.
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OpenAI is introducing GPT-5.6, its next-generation model, two months after the release of GPT-5.5. However, the rollout to customers won’t be as straightforward as previous model updates to ChatGPT and Codex.
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Apple CEO Tim Cook says the company will donate to relief efforts in Venezuela following the catastrophic earthquake that occurred earlier this week.
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Apple has released Xcode 26.6, adding support for a third coding assistant to the company’s integrated development environment software.
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Last year, Notion expanded its productivity suite to include Notion Mail, an AI-powered email client. Today, the company announced that it’s shutting down the Notion Mail inbox service this fall.
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As promised a week ago, Apple just increased prices across a range of product lines. While rising RAM costs are to blame, according to Apple, Wall Street isn’t too impressed with the move.
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ChatGPT users may notice something different about the AI chatbot experience over the next few days. That’s because OpenAI is tweaking how its most-used model works.
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Back in March, Apple Vision Pro customers were gifted a new experience called Debut at the BBC Proms, a 35-minute Apple Immersive Video concert featuring Lukas Sternath performing Grieg at Royal Albert Hall.
Now a wonderful behind-the-scenes interview with director Ian Russell shows what it took to film classical music for Vision Pro.
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Apple’s digital event planning app, Invites, is out with three changes today, including a new cohosting feature.
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No sign of Claude Fable 5’s return yet, though Anthropic does have a new Claude feature launching today. Claude Tag is “a new way for teams to work with Claude,” per Anthropic.
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Apple Watch is playing a role in improving the lives of professional surfers. A new video from Apple shows how World Surf League athletes are using Apple Watch to “stay informed and in control on the Championship Tour.”
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Update 2: Both apps are now removed from the App Store as of 10:04 am PT.
Update: Two hours later, a second stealth app has has climbed the App Store top charts, reaching the second position today. The app Family Online appears to be another sanctioned Russian banking app.
Earlier this month, a sanctioned Russian banking app disguised as a Pomodoro timer reached the top three spot on the U.S. iPhone App Store. Today there’s a new sanctioned Russian banking app in disguise on the App Store.
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Apple released iOS 27 beta 2 today, giving developers the first follow-up update since iOS 27 debuted at WWDC. The new beta is available now for registered developers ahead of next month’s expected public beta release.
iOS 27 is a major iPhone update centered around Siri AI, Apple Intelligence, Liquid Glass refinements, and a long list of quality-of-life changes. Here’s what we’ve found so far in iOS 27 beta 2.
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Apple has released the second iOS 27 beta for developer testing. iOS 27 beta 2 replaces the first iOS 27 beta, which arrived after WWDC 2026 earlier this month, and continues Apple’s summer beta cycle ahead of a public release this fall. We’ll update our devices and share what we discover.
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