Opinion pieces & commentary

Microsoft this year teased a new feature for Windows called “Microsoft Recall,” which essentially captures snapshots of everything that happens on the PC and uses AI to let users quickly find something they’ve forgotten. After much controversy, the feature is now available in beta – and I believe Apple could do something similar on the Mac, but in the right way.

We’ve known for some time that the iPhone 17 Air will require compromises to pull off the ultra-thin design, but a new report yesterday suggests buyers may be sacrificing even more than we thought.

That Apple is willing to pare back the device so severely tells us a lot about the company’s thinking – and not just about this specific model …

With iOS 18.2, Apple introduced an all new Mail app. It introduced mail categorization, a fresh coat of paint, contact photos/business logos for conversations, a new system for grouping emails, and more. All of that sounded nice when it was unveiled back at WWDC, but now that I’ve actually spent some time using it, I’m having some doubts.

Apple has given a lot of attention to Siri in iOS 18 and macOS 15, as the virtual assistant now integrates with ChatGPT and will soon work with Apple Intelligence. One of the changes made is that it’s now easier to interact with Siri just by typing – and I believe this feature should be combined with Spotlight.

Bloomberg yesterday reported that Apple is currently testing an “LLM Siri” within the company, with the intention of announcing it as an iOS 19 feature.

That will likely see it previewed in June at WWDC 2025, but the report says that it won’t actually go live before the spring of 2026 …

The latest iPhone 17 Air report suggests that the expected ultra-slim model could be as thin as 6mm, which would make it the slimmest iPhone ever made.

While that would be a challenging metric to hit, and we’ll believe it when there’s supporting evidence, we do seem to have growing clarity on the market Apple is targeting with the device …

Apple last week launched Final Cut Pro 11, and the company clearly consider the new features offered to be a big deal. The last time Apple did a full version number change was the launch of Final Cut Pro X (aka FCP 10) way back in 2011.

Final Cut Pro 11 includes eight new features, and the AI-driven automatic caption feature was one of the headline ones …

Earlier this week Ming-Chi Kuo suggested that we’ll see an Apple smart home camera in 2026, with the company confident it will prove to be a popular accessory, selling in the tens of millions per year.

Given Apple’s habit of minimizing the number of products it makes, if the report is accurate the company must feel there’s good reason to enter a crowded product category, and I think an Apple camera will likely differentiate itself in two ways: privacy, and Apple Intelligence …

Apple first launched its Health Records feature way back in 2018, to provide a unified view of our own health records.

Recent complications following surgery really showed how valuable this could be if universally adopted, not just for us as patients, but also to assist healthcare providers in delivering the best standard of care …

Apple introduced a brand new interface to its Photos app with iOS 18, which for years had looked pretty much the same. Unsurprisingly, while some users liked the update, others are still reluctant to approve the new app. But there was one very annoying aspect of the new Photos app that Apple is finally fixing with iOS 18.2.

On Friday, Pixelmator, the company behind many popular photo-editing apps for Apple platforms, announced that Apple will be acquiring them. While some people are rightfully skeptical of the deal, I’m optimistic that it might solve one of my biggest grips with the iPad.

The new M4 MacBook Pro is a beast, offering a phenomenal combination of performance and battery-life, with the bonus of a Center Stage camera and the option of a nano-texture display.

But I have to say that I’m not remotely tempted because, honestly, my 2021 M1 Max MacBook Pro still feels to me like a brand-new machine – and that phenomenon could be an issue for Apple going forward …

While we were very confident beforehand that we wouldn’t be seeing a larger iMac this week, there are still plenty of people waiting impatiently for at least a new 27-inch iMac. Many are hoping for 30-inch, 32-inch, or even bigger.

But while I do still think that’s in the works, the launch of the M4 Mac mini relieves a lot of the time pressure, for a couple of reasons …

It’s officially the end of an era. Apple on Wednesday held the last day of its super week of Mac announcements, this time with the launch of a new generation MacBook Pro with an M4 chip. But the company also did something else: it upgraded all Macs with 16GB of RAM as standard, putting an end to 8GB Macs.

Apple on Tuesday introduced a new generation of the Mac mini, and it’s impressively mini – much more compact than its predecessor. But the new Mac mini isn’t just about a new design, it’s also about incredible engineering. It shows how Apple still excels at building the best computers.

A report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman suggests that Apple’s upcoming smart home display might bear more than a passing resemblance to one of the most iconic Macintosh models, the iMac G4.

This is something I suggested might happen back in the summer, though personally I was hoping for a magnetic attachment for an iPad …

While the narrative around Apple Intelligence is that the company is leaning heavily on “coming later” asterisks, and we’ll have to wait a long time for any of it to actually launch, yesterday’s iOS 18.2 beta release tells a somewhat different story.

Now, sure, we have to include an asterisk of our own here – just because a feature is available in the current beta doesn’t mean it’ll make it into the release version in December – but it’s still a good pointer to the intended pace of the Apple Intelligence rollout …

At a time when you can ask AI to modify an existing photo in almost any way you please, or even ask it to generate a completely artificial image, can we ever trust photos again?

Apple is working to address the issue in two ways, and many of us are hoping it will also join an emerging new standard for content authenticity …

Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported over the weekend that some Apple employees believe that the company is about two years behind the curve on artificial intelligence.

Tim Cook didn’t directly address that during an interview with the WSJ, but did say that the company’s aim is always to be best, not first – and that this includes AI …

Apple Vision Pro went on sale in February, but the product has struggled to gain traction. With a starting price of $3,500 in the US, most of its customers are tech enthusiasts. For Apple, this also means that there aren’t many developers interested in building apps for visionOS – and perhaps only a cheaper model would change that.

Yesterday saw the announcement of the new iPad mini 7, and the biggest news here is that, three years after the launch of its predecessor, it’s not much of an upgrade.

It feels like Apple did pretty much the minimum necessary here, which includes using the oldest possible processor capable of running Apple Intelligence …