Michael is 9to5Mac’s Associate Editor, leading all of our Apple news coverage on Saturday and Sunday, and contributing to reporting from Monday to Wednesday. He got started in the world of Apple news during the pandemic, and it became a growing hobby. He’s also an indie iOS developer in his free time, and started the weekly Indie App Spotlight series, which has covered dozens of indie apps since it launched.
Apple introduced iCloud back in June 2011, and since then, the free tier of iCloud has remained at 5GB. However, I’m not here to talk about that today. While 5GB of free iCloud is definitely too little for our needs nearly a decade and a half later, I think Apple has a bigger issue to address with iCloud: its paid tiers.
Expand Expanding Close
At CES 2025, Belkin began shipping its new SoundForm Isolate headphones. They’re the first wireless headphones with active noise cancellation that Belkin has developed, and they come in at just $60 – making them incredibly affordable over-ear headphones.
Expand Expanding Close
According to a tweet from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple will be performing some “merchandise/floor marketing updates” at its retail stores next week. While specific details aren’t confirmed, Apple is likely launching the new Black Unity Apple Watch band for 2025.
Expand Expanding Close
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.
Inscreen taps into Apple’s Screen Time API, and aims to help users be more mindful about the time they’re spending on their devices. Rather than forcefully blocking app access, Inscreen takes a different approach, and keeps you aware of how much time you’re spending on each app.
Expand Expanding Close
Earlier this month, some sources begun to claim that the next generation iPhone SE, which is expected to debut this spring, won’t actually be called ‘iPhone SE’ at all. We’re now starting to hear that it’ll be called ‘iPhone 16E’ instead. This may be a weird rumor, but I think it actually makes a lot of sense, given what we know so far about the iPhone SE 4.
Expand Expanding Close
Apple released the release candidate builds of iOS 18.3 earlier this week, meaning that we’re just days away from seeing that update ship to the public. That also means iOS 18.4 beta is just around the corner, which is widely expected to include some of the big Siri improvements with Apple Intelligence. Here’s what we’re expecting with Siri in iOS 18.4.
Expand Expanding Close
Today, Meta is announcing Edits: a new mobile video editing platform. This comes just hours after TikTok (and as a result, CapCut) were banned in the US – though TikTok is currently being restored, at least temporarily.
Expand Expanding Close
According to Mark Gurman’s Power On newsletter, supply of the current generation iPhone SE, which debuted in 2022, is quickly shrinking. This is unsurprising, given the fact that we’re all expecting a new iPhone SE to debut in just a couple months. However, it is uniquely interesting, as it indicates that Apple likely has no plans to keep the current generation model around.
Expand Expanding Close
According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple’s new Mail app is going to make its way to the Mac very soon, with macOS 15.4. Apple introduced the new Mail app to the iPhone back in December with iOS 18.2, but it hasn’t made its way to any other platform since.
Expand Expanding Close
Last month, The Wall Street Journal reported that the iPhone 17 Air will cost less than the iPhone Pro models, contradicting the long-standing expectation that the new ultra-thin iPhone would be even more expensive than the iPhone Pro Max models. With that being the case, the phone actually makes more sense than ever.
Expand Expanding Close
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.
PostPocket is a simple tool, aiming to help users keep track of various links, posts, articles, videos, or anything from across the internet. It allows you to save everything in one centralized place. The app also has categorization, allowing you to keep all of your links sorted. The app is available on iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
Expand Expanding Close
In November, Apple announced some additional 3% cash back partners for the Apple Card, Booking.com and Chargepoint. Those were welcome additions, but one of the existing partners will also be going away in a couple weeks: that being Panera Bread.
Expand Expanding Close
According to Mark Gurman’s Power On newsletter, Apple is not working on a new version of its AirPort wireless router. However, they are working on something else that could potentially serve as a wireless access point, so don’t give up hope quite yet.
Expand Expanding Close
In recent years, iOS and macOS have been closer than ever to having feature parity. Nowadays, macOS releases mostly bring features first introduced on the iPhone and iPad, occasionally adding a new twist. However, despite this feature parity, there are some gaps, mostly to do with customization. Here are a couple of recent customization additions that have been made on the iPhone and iPad that haven’t quite made their way to the Mac yet.
Expand Expanding Close
While the MacBook Pro is the place to go for the latest and greatest tech, I’ve always been drawn to the MacBook Air for one key reason: portability. There’s just something really nice about the thinness and lightness of the MacBook Air, one that makes me willing to compromise on miniLED, ProMotion, additional ports, and so on.
The MacBook Air isn’t a perfect computer by any means, but there are some simple upgrades that I’d like to see Apple make with the M4 MacBook Air this year. Any of these upgrades would make it a much better package in my book.
Expand Expanding Close
Last year, Apple unveiled the first Macs with the M4 chip: the MacBook Pro, iMac, and Mac mini. That’s about half of the Mac lineup, leaving the MacBook Air, Mac Studio, and Mac Pro. Among the two remaining desktops, the Mac Studio is definitely the more popular one – though it’s a bit outdated, still sporting the M2 Max and M2 Ultra. Here’s everything we’re expecting with the next Mac Studio, though it is a bit light.
Expand Expanding Close
According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the next generation entry-level iPad will sport the A17 Pro chip. We always expected the iPad 11 to support the Apple Intelligence feature set, though it was unclear which chip Apple would end up putting in the lower-end device.
Expand Expanding Close
According to Mark Gurman from Bloomberg, Apple will be launching a new Apple Watch SE later this year, as well as introducing refreshes for Apple Watch Series 11 and Ultra 3. Based on today’s rumors, it’s sounding like it’ll be a big year for Apple Watch.
Expand Expanding Close
According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the new Apple smart home hub, which some refer to as ‘Apple command center’ or simply ‘HomePad’, might ship a little bit later than anticipated.
Expand Expanding Close
According to Mark Gurman’s Power On newsletter, Apple is planning no sort of Vision Pro refresh in 2025. He mentions that it’s possible that Apple could theoretically unveil a headset ahead of a release next year, but all signs are pointing to new Vision Pro hardware launching in 2026 instead.
On the other hand, he reports that Apple’s more “urgent goal” is to create a cheaper headset, and Apple is ‘ramping up’ development for that headset.
Expand Expanding Close
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.
Univershuffle is a new music discovery app that shuffles all of the songs on Apple Music, completely at random – no AI or algorithms involved. It offers the ultimate experience for finding new music, so long as you’re willing to sort through a ton of songs.
The app is available for free in a limited capacity, though you’ll need to link an Apple Music account to listen to songs in their entirety. It launched on the App Store this week.
Expand Expanding Close
According to Bloomberg, Apple is working on a second generation version of its popular and affordable item tracker, the AirTag, which initially debuted in 2021. Here’s everything what we’re expecting Apple to deliver with AirTag 2 later this year.
Expand Expanding Close
For a limited time, Apple is offering (at least) two new sign up bonuses for Apple Card. Apple Card typically comes with no sign up bonus, unlike most rewards credit cards. If you’re interested in Apple Card, this could be worth jumping on!
Expand Expanding Close
Mark Gurman from Bloomberg recently reported that Apple will be redesigning the Magic Mouse – for the first time since its introduction in 2009. In the mouses over fifteen-year history, the design has remained mostly the same, besides the switch from AA batteries to Lightning in 2015, and Lightning to USB-C in 2024.
However, that’ll soon be changing.
Expand Expanding Close