macOS Tahoe

A lot has been said about iPadOS 26 bringing many powerful Mac-like features to the iPad. While that’s true, the exchange is also mutual. Apple has several iPad-inspired changes coming to the Mac in macOS Tahoe. Here’s what’s new.

How dead is FireWire support in macOS Tahoe 26? As dead as the iPod, as far as the Mac is concerned, which is at least a little sad. Stephen Hackett checked.

In classic 512 Pixels fashion, he’s conjured together a real world demonstration using a battle-tested FireWire 800 cable-connected drive, two Thunderbolt adapters including a Thunderbolt 2 to 3 dongle, and a Mac. Woof.

If you’re still rocking a first-generation iPod or, like me, are holding on to an old FireWire external drive for dear life, this one might hit hard: the first developer beta of macOS 26 Tahoe appears to have dropped support for the FireWire 400 and 800 standards.

Apple’s Journal app is coming to the iPad and Mac as part of iPadOS 26 and macOS Tahoe, and several brand new features will be included too—even on iPhone.

One of Apple’s most delightful software additions in recent years has been Live Activities, the iPhone feature that’s only gotten better over time. In macOS Tahoe and iPadOS 26, Live Activities are coming to the Mac and iPad too, but each in a very different way. Here’s how they’ll work.

During the Platforms State of the Union at WWDC, Apple just announced that macOS 26 Tahoe will be the last release of macOS that supports Intel. That means from next year, major new versions of Apple’s desktop operating system will only run on Apple Silicon Macs (that is, 2020 M1 models and newer).

Of course, Intel Macs will continue to get critical security updates for some time thereafter. But users should not expect to be able to update to get new features from macOS 27 onwards, as no Intel Mac will be supported on macOS 27.