Opinion pieces & commentary

In the space of one week, we have seen the transformation of our expectations for the new Siri. Instead of having to wait for Apple to catch up with OpenAI and Google, we now need only to wait for the company to tweak the existing Gemini models.

While that is indeed a dramatic turnaround, we still shouldn’t expect overnight miracles from the new Siri whenever it does now launch …

Apple yesterday confirmed reports that it was partnering with Google’s Gemini to provide the AI features for Siri and more.

The primary reason for the announcement couldn’t have been made any clearer by the way the company chose to release the news …

It’s been half a year since iOS 26 debuted in beta, so I’ve had quite a bit of time to sit with it. In a release with such a massive redesign, it’s easy for some of the smaller additional features to fly under the radar – but after giving iOS 26 my fair shot, I’ve come to really like one underlying feature in particular, and it has to do with screenshots.

Apple has been roundly criticized for falling behind in AI, and for its rather disastrous Apple Intelligence launch in which it was forced to admit it had promised things it couldn’t deliver.

The second criticism is valid, the first only partly so. But a new report suggests that Apple’s path to delivering on its AI promises may be a radical one: abandoning work on its own model. I do now think that’s absolutely the right thing to do …

As 2025 draws to a close, here’s a look at what defined Apple over the last 12 months, for better or for worse.

While Apple is currently lobbying against being given a legal responsibility for age verification when it comes to downloading apps, I think the company’s customers would very much benefit from it taking on this role.

Given the company’s track record in finding privacy-respecting approaches to personal data, I would like to see it go even further than the proposals we’ve seen to date …

The iPhone Air appears to have been one of the least successful iPhones ever, but it seems that hasn’t discouraged Apple from trying again in 2027 with an iPhone Air 2.

The latest report suggests that the company may fix the two biggest problems with the device, and if accurate, I would expect the 2nd-gen model to be significantly more popular …

With iOS 26 this year, Apple announced an incredibly promising improvement to the order tracking feature in the Wallet app. With on-device Apple Intelligence models, the company planned to identify orders in your email to provide tracking updates, eliminating the need for retailers to need to support their proprietary feature.

I was really optimistic about this improvement, but after using it for the past couple months, it honestly feels a dull band-aid solution that never should’ve been implemented. Here’s why.

Apple CEO Tim Cook was yesterday spotted in Washington, D.C. during a visit to lobby against a proposed App Store age verification policy.

But the very argument the company uses to oppose the proposal is in fact the strongest argument in favour of it …

With iPadOS 26.2, Apple is bringing two major upgrades to the iPad: Split View has returned, and Slide Over has a new gesture. Now, you can just drag and drop apps from your dock, and they’ll snap into place – there’ll no longer be a need to manually resize your windows in the manner you need them.

This was already how things worked in iPadOS 18 and prior, and now it’s finally back.

With Alan Dye departing for Meta and leaving a hollowed-out design division behind him, his replacement, Stephen Lemay, will have a rare opportunity to rebuild the company’s design culture from the inside out.

Apple has frequently used small variations on the same one-sentence justification when giving in to government demands that conflict with the company’s stated values: “Apple complies with the law in each of the countries in which it operates.”

However, there are occasions on which the company has instead chosen to stand up to unreasonable government demands, and we yesterday saw the latest (and highly successful) example …

The iPhone Air was arguably the biggest innovation in iPhone design since the iPhone X. The iPhone Fold we’re expecting to see launch next year will be an even bigger shift.

All the signs point to the iPhone Fold being the best foldable smartphone launched to date, but there is one big problem with it – and it’s almost the obvious one …

A new ChatGPT voice update has made interacting with the chatbot far more flexible than it used to be, and I think is an example of one of the key things we can eventually expect from the new Siri.

While OpenAI’s change might seem like a relatively small one on the surface, I’m already finding that it completely transforms the experience of using ChatGPT …

A Bloomberg report suggests that next year could be a Snow Leopard-style update for each of Apple’s operating systems. In other words, the company will prioritize working on bug fixes and reliability over new features.

The timing of this claim seems dubious to me: as Gurman himself acknowledges, Apple absolutely has to introduce a lot of AI improvements next year, so I don’t see how it can possibly qualify as a bug-fix year. Timing aside, however, this is something I would love to see …

Apple announced the redesigned Mac mini with M4 chip last October. It’s by no means a new product at this point, and it’s nearly a year old. However, I think it may be one of Apple’s greatest gifts to up and coming creators, developers, and all sorts of creative professionals.

Back in the Intel days, the Mac Pro was the computer many of us lusted over even if we had no possible justification for actually buying one. It was by far the most powerful Mac and the easiest to upgrade – not to mention one of the most beautiful machines the company ever made.

The 2023 Mac Pro was even more gorgeous than its predecessor, but with the radical new architecture of Apple Silicon, the writing was already on the wall …

There’s long been speculation about when Apple CEO Tim Cook might retire and who is likely to replace him. That intensified earlier this month when he turned 65.

Cook himself has made only two on-the-record statements, but a new report over the weekend suggests that the company is now ramping up preparations to replace him “as soon as next year” …

When AirPods Pro 3 initially debuted, I was a little bit hesitant about upgrading. I felt that AirPods Pro 2 were still excellent. On top of that, one of the key features of AirPods Pro 3, Live Translation, was also coming to AirPods Pro 2. However, now that I’ve actually given them a shot – I can genuinely say I was wrong about my pessimism.

My colleague Ryan last week expressed concern that Apple’s upcoming HomePod Touch device might be making the same mistake as the original speaker.

But while I do suspect it may be something of a slow burn, I think the device will eventually achieve a much larger market even at the same price …

I said only recently that it’s getting harder and harder to believe Apple can deliver on the new Siri. The company’s backtracking on announcements coupled to very vague statements on revised timings were certainly not making it easy to imagine that the new intelligent assistant will deliver.

I’m not yet ready to do my own U-turn on this, and my skepticism still very much remains, but there have at least been a couple of encouraging signs in the last few days …