Michael Burkhardt

At WWDC25 this year, Apple announced a pair of new features to vastly improve the phone calling experience for iPhone users. Hold Assist does exactly what it says on the tin, and manages calls for you while you’re placed on hold – getting rid of the need to listen to dreaded hold music.

The other feature, Call Screening, has much larger implications, and dealing with spam phone calls may become an issue of the past.

Apple has long wrapped up its spring releases, including the new iPhone 16e, M4 MacBook Air, M3 iPad Air, and A16 iPad. While the iPhone 17 lineup will certainly be the star of the show for this fall’s hardware releases, there’s something a bit unique coming later this year: AirTag 2.

The all-new smart home hub was supposed to be Apple’s star of the show this year. There was just one problem: Siri. After a multitude of Siri hiccups and delays, it begun to look more and more unlikely that the product would launch in 2025. Now, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman is reporting that a 2026 launch is almost a guarantee.

Welcome to Indie App Spotlight. This is a weekly 9to5Mac series where we showcase the latest apps in the indie app world. If you’re a developer and would like your app featured, get in contact.

Planning things accordingly can be hard. Timescape aims to make that easier by providing you a big picture look at your entire year, making it easy for you to see what long-term events you may already have booked.

Apple’s been toying around with the idea of a cheaper iPhone in the lineup for quite some time, though it’s never been a consistent thing. Obviously, there was the iPhone 5c back in 2013 as a cheaper offering compared to the iPhone 5s. It didn’t sell too well, but it was certainly its first venture into this market.

Afterwards, there was the iPhone SE lineup, which had an average of 3 years between each refresh. Now, it’s looking like the ‘cheaper’ iPhone will become a regular part of the iPhone lineup, per recent reports.

Welcome to Indie App Spotlight. This is a weekly 9to5Mac series where we showcase the latest apps in the indie app world. If you’re a developer and would like your app featured, get in contact.

Sequel is an all in one app that makes it easy to keep track of all of the movies, TV shows, books, games, and more that you’d like to follow. It packs an intuitive interface and a number of delightful features to make it the ultimate media manager for your iPhone or iPad.

I’ve been reviewing one of XREAL’s more recent releases of AR glasses: the XREAL One’s. These are certainly the most versatile pair of AR glasses I’ve tried out so far, and they actually really come to life somewhere you wouldn’t expect: the M4 iPad Pro running iPadOS 26. XREAL One come in at just under 3 ounces (84 grams), making them easy to just carry around.

According to the Power On newsletter from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple still has a few more iOS 26 features in the pipeline. These features weren’t announced at WWDC, though they were heavily rumored, and they should still arrive in the coming months.

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With macOS 26 Tahoe this year, Apple introduced a new Control Center. Of course, it implements the new Liquid Glass design seen across the entire ecosystem, but it also brings a brand new feature to the Mac for the first time: third-party integrations.

That, on its own, is a big deal, and was a greatly appreciated feature of iOS 18 last year. However, it has an even bigger implication for the Mac.

Welcome to Indie App Spotlight. This is a weekly 9to5Mac series where we showcase the latest apps in the indie app world. If you’re a developer and would like your app featured, get in contact.

If you’re trying to find an ideal spot outdoors, whether that be a coffee shop, bar, or restaurant – but want to know whether or not it’ll be in the sun or shade, Coffee in the Sun is the premier app for you. It’s a vibe coded app, but it certainly works well – and the developer put an adequate amount of effort into crafting it.

According to Apple leaker Majin Bu, Apple will once again be repositioning the Apple logo on the next iPhone. Apple last repositioned the Apple logo with the iPhone 11 lineup, and it’s remained centered on the iPhone ever since. Six years later, that may be changing once again – if this rumor holds up.

Logitech recently provided me with its Casa Pop Up Desk for review, and it’s a nifty little gadget for those who want more of a fixed desk setup while working on the go. If you’re more of a coffee shop person or always working outdoors – this could be a neat product for you.

Welcome to Indie App Spotlight. This is a weekly 9to5Mac series where we showcase the latest apps in the indie app world. If you’re a developer and would like your app featured, get in contact.

ClosetLog provides you with all of the information you need to know about your wardrobe, and helps you make better decisions on what you should wear. It’s a useful little tool, and helps you balance what you’re wearing on a day-to-day basis.

For the longest time, I had believed that purchasing a new iPad at full price never made any sort of sense. Ultimately, you’re paying more than an equivalently spec’d MacBook, for less capability. It always felt like iPadOS was the key limiting factor for the iPad, not the hardware.

However, I’ve now owned an M4 iPad Pro for nearly a year, and I can confidently say it’s changed how I feel towards iPads. And that’s before factoring in all of the great new features in iPadOS 26.

A few weeks ago, Logitech announced an interesting new keyboard case for the iPad Air and iPad Pro – called the Logitech Flip Folio. It takes a different approach, and certainly targets a new market that hasn’t quite been thought about before.

Apple unveiled iOS 26 last week at WWDC 2025. While Liquid Glass and iPadOS certainly stole the show, there’s a number of smaller features for iPhone users that I think a lot of people will still enjoy, and I’ll be diving into them here.

Over the past few months, I’ve had the pleasure of testing out the reMarkable Paper Pro. You can read my full review here, but in short, it gets everything right about the note taking experience.

Despite being an e-ink tablet, it does get quite pricey. However, there are certainly some fantastic parts of the experience that make it worth comparing to an iPad Air, depending on what you’re looking for in a note taking device for school, work, or whatever else.

Apple has definitely built up quite a compelling ecosystem around the Apple Watch. Between all of its fitness challenges, activity rings, and competitions – Apple has certainly found a way to make exercise fun for a lot of people. The problem? Some people simply don’t like the form factor of a smartwatch.