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
Programmable physical controls are becoming key to power user workflows, including agentic programming. Now Logitech is bringing to market a compact solution that fits on any desk.
Logitech today announced the MX Keypad, a $99.99 accessory with nine customizable full-color LCD keys for launching commands, running macros, and accessing AI tools.
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Looking for new iPhone and iPad games to play? The App Store has plenty of games without ads and in-app purchases.
Apple Arcade is a great subscription option for families, though it’s not the only game in town. If you’re a Netflix subscriber, you’re also paying for a huge catalog of great iPhone and iPad games.
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CarPlay can make any vehicle feel significantly more comfortable and family. Still, the experience is not always perfect out of the box.
Some cars still require a wired connection, others lack CarPlay entirely, and what about keeping your iPhone charged and cooled on long trips?
Fortunately, improving those areas doesn’t require a big investment. These affordable accessories cover everything from wireless CarPlay and MagSafe charging to cable management and complete displays for older vehicles.
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CarPlay has picked up its fifth major AI chatbot app with the addition of Claude. Anthropic’s iPhone app adding CarPlay is the second AI chatbot app to be updated with support this week.
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When watchOS 27 is released later this month, Apple Watch users may notice that some things work a bit differently. The upcoming software update removes three features that users may miss after updating.
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In August, Fender released the $299 MIX wireless headphones. The over-ear headphones come with a replaceable battery and the FWD Tx USB-C wireless transmitter for low-latency, lossless connectivity. Fender MIX headphones also now include an iPhone app for tuning the experience.
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Update: A day later, GPT-6 Astra is rolling out to Business and Pro customers on the $100/month or $200/month plan. This follows other new model releases before Plus customers on the $20/month plan gain access.
Update #2: A few hours later, Plus users with the $20/month subscription now have Astra access as well.
It’s been just over a year since OpenAI released the first GPT-5 models for ChatGPT. Now it’s time for GPT-6 Astra to upgrade ChatGPT and Codex capabilities. Details below.
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Last month, SpaceXAI launched Grok Bot, an iMessage-style AI system that displays agents as teammates. The product originally arrived as an iPhone and Mac app with a very expensive price tag. In the weeks since launch, Grok Bot has expanded to the iPad and dramatically lowered the cost.
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Back in July, Apple updated its TestFlight app with a basic search feature. While you might think this simple update would be universally welcomed, the same TestFlight app introduced a pretty frustrating bug for a lot of users.
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I mentioned today in my Siri AI Apple Watch piece that there’s one change I still hope Apple makes to watchOS 27 before it ships this month. It’s one of those common muscle-memory features that have existed for years, and I’ve been missing it all summer.
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Update: Service appears to be coming back online for some after about half an hour. Your mileage may vary.
It’s not just you. Claude, ChatGPT/Codex, and Grok are currently experiencing what appears to be a widespread outage for many users.
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Siri AI on Apple Watch arrived two cycles late for watchOS 27 beta this summer. I had high hopes for how new Siri could transform Apple Watch into an AI wearable.
What actually happened in July and August is that Siri has been remarkably unusable in watchOS 27 beta. Like “hold off on updating” bad.
This week, I half-expected Apple to remove “Siri AI” from watchOS 27 beta 8 and revert to the previous version of Siri. Instead, I think Siri AI on Apple Watch actually got good?
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While computer use isn’t new for Claude on the desktop, running it in the background is a nice upgrade.
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GymKit has been one of Apple Watch’s smartest fitness features since it launched in 2017. Tap your watch to compatible gym equipment, and Apple Watch shares your heart rate while the machine sends back metrics like distance, incline, pace, and calories.
With iOS 27, Apple is expanding that idea beyond Apple Watch. I tested the new GymKit on iPhone and AirPods Pro 3 experience with a GymKit-compatible treadmill. It basically gives you the Apple Watch GymKit workout tracking experience, just without the watch. This could be useful in a lot of scenarios.
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Adobe is bringing its creative and productivity tools directly into Slack, letting teams create and edit images, videos, designs and PDFs without leaving the conversations where projects already take shape.
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In June, Anthropic first released Fable 5, its Mythos-class AI model for Claude. Three months later, Anthropic is enhancing Claude with its new Fable 5.1 model upgrade.
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Apple has a new CEO today. Meanwhile, a vintage video of Steve Jobs from 1996 has resurfaced. It adds some incredible perspective.
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Meta is launching Muse Voice Transcribe, its first real-time audio perception model. It brings multilingual, streaming transcription to Meta AI for Mac, Muse Code, and developers through the Meta Model API.
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Aside from being featured by Apple in the M6 Mac mini launch, Perplexity has been relatively quiet on the Mac front this summer. That changes today with hybrid compute for Mac.
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Here’s a cool new thing launching today: Cibby, a beautifully designed iOS app for physical video game collectors.
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9to5Mac is brought to you by Memoket: The Memoket Gem is an 11g AI wearable that slots beside your Apple Watch in a co-wear band. Press once to capture a conversation, and Gem connects it to what you discussed weeks ago — surfacing the earlier thread with a source link. From $179, shipping August 2026.
In 2023, early adopters were just getting to know ChatGPT and AI chatbot tech. Three years later, OpenAI’s Codex agent, now part of the ChatGPT desktop app, has brought about a similar season of learning. Here’s how I’m using ChatGPT, Codex, and more on my Mac.
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Apple has released the eighth iOS 27 beta for developer testing. iOS 27 beta 8 continues Apple’s summer beta cycle ahead of a public release in September. We’ll update our devices and share what we discover.
Update 5:04 p.m. ET: Now available for public beta testers as well.
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President Trump has “reached out to Apple directly” about changing Lake Ontario’s name to Lake America in Apple Maps, according to U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.
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CarPlay is about to get even better with iOS 27 in September. New features including a dedicated Siri app and Siri AI will upgrade Apple’s car infotainment system for iPhone users.
Even before the big iPhone software update officially launches, CarPlay in August has improved for everyone with three big app releases.
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