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- Monday February 09
- 11:51 amBad Bunny’s Apple Music Super Bowl halftime show set new records
Yesterday’s Bad Bunny’s Apple Music Super Bowl halftime show – which also featured Lady Gaga and Ricky Martin – set new records, according to the iPhone maker. Apple also highlighted the ability to watch a replay of the show and listen to the full set list on Apple Music … more…11:30 amApple’s succession crisis is all part of the plan
Macworld Apple’s high-level employees keep leaving. While some might consider this a troubling state of affairs, given that the departures of talented people can be both the cause and effect of low morale at a company, CEO Tim Cook isn’t worried, because it’s all part of the plan. “This is an important part of leadership: thinking about these things and having plans in place,” he said at a wide-ranging all-hands meeting last week. “You know, when people get to a certain age, some are going to retire. This is kind of a natural thing.” Cook is right to say that time marches inexorably onward. Even the most dedicated employee is eventually going to reach a point when they no longer relish the 9-to-5. (Most journalists hit this point sometime around their 30th birthday.) This explains, to a degree, why chief operating officer Jeff Williams retired in November, and two more senior executives announced their retirements the following month. They’d been doing it for a while, and didn’t want to do it anymore. As Cook says, that’s natural. Still, it’s not like we’re talking about compulsory retirement on the grounds of age. Retiring is a choice. And even if the fact of retirement is inevitable, the choice people make about when to retire can tell you a lot about their state of mind and what they think about their organization’s future. If people have decided that now is a good time to get out of Dodge, it’s possible they can see a gunfight in the near future. Or an AI battle that Apple is ill-equipped to win. What’s more, as Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman points out in his coverage of the all-hands meeting, those three retirements were not the only high-profile departures Apple has experienced in the past few months. No mention was made of John Giannandrea, the AI boss who stepped down in December (and will retire in the spring) after Siri failed to make significant progress on his watch. Nor of software design VP Alan Dye, who left the same month to take up a role at Meta. But you know, when people get to a certain age, some are going to work for Mark Zuckerberg. This is kind of a natural thing. Alan Dye, incidentally, is far from alone in walking away from Apple’s design team. On the hardware side, the company has since 2019 lost Jony Ive, Evans Hankey, Marc Newson, and Abidur Chowdhury, along with numerous less famous but still notable employees. Tim Cook says the most recent retirements were not surprises; they were, he insists, carefully orchestrated. But it’s tempting to wonder what a company would look like if it were experiencing surprising, unorchestrated churn. And how different that would look from the current situation at Apple, with departments being almost completely replaced within the space of a few years and multiple senior executives grabbing a parachute at the same time. The tech industry is notorious for its high turnover of personnel and its unwillingness to put up with failure, as we saw with the departure of Giannandrea and may have been the case with Dye, who was linked to the disappointing reception of Liquid Glass. Everyone has a right to retire when they’ve had enough of the long hours and high pressure, or to take a more lucrative position if one is offered. But Cupertino used to be relatively stable. It was a place you moved to, not from. Jony Ive stayed at the company for 27 years because it offered rigorous challenges and a creative environment (plus enough money to buy lots of Aston-Martins). Will we say the same thing about the current batch of Apple employees? Cook, who has been at the company for 28 years, is understood to be planning his own retirement. But it’s tempting to wonder if that’s had to be pushed back in light of other departures. Is that what he means by orchestration? Timing your exit can be very important. Four great Australian cricketers retired at the same time in 2007 because they’d won everything there was to win and thrashing England 5-0 at home felt like a good place to stop. But that left a team full of gaps which ended up losing the next three Ashes series. If at all possible you want people to space out their departures. That’s what succession planning is all about. And for all Tim Cook’s positive words, it doesn’t seem like it’s happening at Apple right now. Foundry Welcome to our weekly Apple Breakfast column, which includes all the Apple news you missed last week in a handy bite-sized roundup. We call it Apple Breakfast because we think it goes great with a Monday morning cup of coffee or tea, but it’s cool if you want to give it a read during lunch or dinner hours too. Trending: Top stories If Apple is richer than ever, ponders the Macalope, why does it feel so broke? The iPhone Fold can’t just be a folding iPhone, argues Jason Cross. We reveal 15 features to make your Apple devices work in perfect harmony. The Super Bowl wouldn’t be super without Apple, says Jason Snell. No, Google didn’t just admit that Siri will run on its servers. Apple says AI is fueling ‘new categories of products,’ but will they ever arrive? Reviews corner AirTag (2nd gen): An even better finder. Creator Studio vs. Creative Cloud: Can Apple’s new suite take on Adobe? Alogic Edge 40-inch 5K2K: One high-res monitor that beats two. MSP360 Backup: A powerful Time Machine alternative for advanced Mac users. The rumor mill The new M5 Pro/Max MacBook Pros could arrive any day now. And Apple’s M5 Ultra secret may have been spilled. Fresh leak offers new details on the upcoming folding iPhone. The iPhone 17e might launch in mere weeks. Apple may be planning a folding throwback that you’ll flip over. Video of the week What’s your favorite Apple commercial? We reveal our picks in Macworld’s latest short. Enjoy our video on TikTok or Instagram. Software updates, bugs, and problems If you use Apple Pay, watch out for this clever phishing scam. Scary iOS spyware can hide iPhone recording indicators. iPhone users say iOS 26.2.1 causes crashes and connectivity issues. iPhone Lockdown Mode is so good even the FBI can’t crack it. And with that, we’re done for this week’s Apple Breakfast. If you’d like to get regular roundups, sign up for our newsletters, including our new email from The Macalope–an irreverent, humorous take on the latest news and rumors from a half-man, half-mythical Mac beast. You can also follow us on Facebook, Threads, Bluesky, or X for discussion of breaking Apple news stories. See you next Monday, and stay Appley.08:06 am2026 Mac Studio: What we know about the upcoming M5 update
Macworld The Mac Studio was originally released in 2022 and has been updated twice since then. A report in late 2025 claimed that Apple had “largely written off” the Mac Pro and considers the Mac Studio to be its flagship desktop Mac. That means big things could be in store for the future of the Mac Studio. The current Mac Studio was released in March 2025, and reports of the next upgrade are already starting to appear. This article keeps track of those reports, so for information on what the upgrade will include and when it could be released, refer to this page. 2026 Mac Studio: Release date Possible release in March 2026 The Mac Studio comes with M-series Max and Ultra chips, and we can use the release of the base M-series chip to get an idea of when the Mac Studio will be updated. Apple releases the base M-series chip first (usually in the MacBook Pro) and then follows with the M-series Max and Ultra Mac Studio a few months later. The most recent base M-series chip is the M5, which was released in the MacBook Pro in October 2025. So that generation of chip will likely make its appearance in the new Mac Studio in the first half of 2026. According to a report by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the M5 Max and M5 Ultra Mac Studio are on Apple’s release schedule for 2026. Two of the three Mac Studio releases since it was introduced occurred in March, with the 2023 M2 Max/Ultra Mac Studio released in June at WWDC. So look for an M5 Mac Studio release in the March to June timeframe. On February 8, Gurman reported that the new Mac Studio “shouldn’t arrive too long after the spring Mac refresh.” 2026 Mac Studio: Processor Expected to have M5 Max and M5 Ultra chips The 2025 Mac Studio was a complete surprise. It was introduced with an M4 Max chip, which was expected, but the highest-end version shipped with an M3 Ultra rather than an M4 Ultra. The M3 Ultra is technically faster than the M4 Max, but it’s an older chip. Apple has not explained the reasoning for this. Apple The next Mac Studio will not have this staggered chip configuration, according to reports. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman claims that Apple will return to the same generation, M5 Max and M5 Ultra, for the next Mac Studio. Specifics about those chips have not been reported, however. MacRumors reported in December 2025 that references to the M5 Max and M5 Ultra Mac Studio appeared in a set of leaked Apple files. 2026 Mac Studio: Specs New separate CPU and GPU blocks for customization Standard configurations of 36GB and 96GB of RAM Thunderbolt 5 The major change with the Mac Studio’s specs is going to be with the chip itself. Apple is completely redesigning how it works, according to an October 2025 report by MaxTech’s Vadim Yuryev. The M5 Pro and M5 Max will feature the CPU and GPU on separate blocks, which would allow customers more options to configure these components. For example, one could set up a base CPU configuration with a maxed-out GPU. While Yuryev did not specifically mention the M5 Ultra, it stands to reason that the Ultra chip will also feature this new block configuration. The rest of the specifications are not expected to change. It will likely start with 36GB of RAM for the M5 Max, and 96GB of RAM for the M5 Ultra, and SSDs up to 8TB or 16TB. The current Mac Studio comes with Thunderbolt 5, and this should continue with the new model. 2026 Mac Studio: Design No design changes expected The Mac Studio made its debut in 2022, so it’s only three years old. Apple is expected to stick with the same design, which is also reflected in the M4 Mac mini, as no reports have been made about the design. Foundry The port offerings are also expected to remain the same. The Mac Studio has: M-series Max model: 2 front USB-C ports (supporting USB 3 at 10Gbps) M-series Ultra model: 2 front Thunderbolt 5 ports front SDHX Card slot rear 3.5mm audio jack 4 rear Thunderbolt 5 ports 2 rear USB-A ports HDMI port 10Gb ethernet port 2026 Mac Studio: Price Here are the prices for the current standard base configurations of the 2025 Mac Studio for reference: $1,999/£2,099/CA$2,699/AU$3,499 M4 Max, 36GB Unified Memory, 512GB SSD $3,999/£4,199/CA$5,499/AU$6,999 M3 Ultra, 96GB Unified Memory, 1TB SSD Pricing for the new Mac Studio has not been reported, though pricing could go up because of the U.S. tariffs situation–the components are made overseas. The prices may be adapted to more recent exchange rates elsewhere.08:00 amPlease stop Googling Mac fixes—use this $30 tool instead
Macworld TL;DR: MacMagic bundles the tools Apple hides into one app—clean up your Mac, manage files, tweak settings, and boost productivity for life for just $29.99 (MSRP $99.99). macOS is polished, powerful, and beautifully designed—but anyone who’s used a Mac long enough knows there are a lot of useful features buried under menus, Terminal commands, or not exposed at all. And that’s exactly the gap MacMagic is built to fill. MacMagic is an all-in-one utility app that pulls hidden macOS features and everyday power tools into a clean, easy interface. Need to clear out bloated caches and logs, reveal hidden files, force-delete stubborn junk, or refresh Finder without restarting your whole system? One click. You can batch rename files, convert and resize images in bulk, merge and compress PDFs, lock folders, or quickly access system tools Apple tucks away. There’s even a lightweight text editor, QR code generator, database viewer, and smart Wi-Fi controls—because those little things add up over time. MacMagic feels like the missing toolbox Apple never shipped, especially if you manage files, clean up storage, or like having control without digging through system menus. With lifetime upgrades included, this all-in-one tool can be installed on up to five devices. Get lifetime access to MacMagic for just $29.99 (MSRP $99.99) while you can. MacMagic: Lifetime Upgrades LicenseSee Deal StackSocial prices subject to change.07:50 amM5 Pro MacBook Pro release date just became clearer
After weeks of speculation, Apple’s M5 Pro MacBook Pros may finally be on the horizon. A fresh report offers the clearest launch window yet. (via Cult of Mac - Your source for the latest Apple news, rumors, analysis, reviews, how-tos and deals.)Sunday February 0807:22 pmTransmit 5.11.4
File transfer app adds support for four-digit octal codes in FTP/SFTP permission rules. ($45 new, free update, 37.6 MB, macOS 12+)05:00 pmToday in Apple history: Steve Jobs flips out over iPad tweet
On February 8, 2010, a tweet sent from a prerelease iPad by Wall Street Journal editor Alan Murray reportedly sent Steve Jobs into a rage. (via Cult of Mac - Your source for the latest Apple news, rumors, analysis, reviews, how-tos and deals.)04:11 pmApple TV users get $2/month Peacock, including Super Bowl and Olympics
Peacock is home to two of the biggest TV events of the year: the Super Bowl and the Olympics. And if you’re an Apple TV subscriber, you can add on Peacock for only $2/month. Here are the details. more…03:27 pmNew iPad and iPad Air models should be launching soon, but don’t get too excited
Apple has two new iPad models slated for early in the year: a new base iPad with A18 chip, and a new iPad Air with an M4 chip. While Apple product launches can often sound exciting, there might not be too much more to the story for these iPad models. more…03:00 pmThese are my early 2026 favorites for EDC iPhone tech accessories
Lately, I’ve been leaning more and more into a sling-based EDC. As a techy husband and father of two, I constantly find myself needing more space than my pockets can hold, but not always wanting to bring an entire backpack. A cross-body sling (or fanny pack, as it was once called) has become the perfect middle ground. It forces you to be intentional about what you carry, while still giving you more flexibility than a standard pocket setup. I wanted to share some of my favorite and most standout tech accessories that I bring with me on most days—whether I’m bouncing between meetings, running errands, traveling, or just getting work done wherever I happen to be. This is my ideal everyday carry cross-body sling. more…02:40 pmMarch 2 release event may be for M5 MacBook Pro refresh
Apple is rumored to be launching a product the week of March 2, with the most likely candidate being MacBook Pro models equipped with M5 Pro and M5 Max chips.The M5 MacBook Pro could finally get some stablemates in MarchApple often holds events in March as one of its earliest of the year. According to one report, that could be just the case in 2026.Writing in Sunday's "Power On" newsletter for Bloomberg, Mark Gurman writes that Apple is planning a product launch that is currently scheduled for as "early as the week of March 2." Rumor Score: 🤔 Possible Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums02:10 pmBring back the glow: MacBooks lost their soul when the Apple logo went dark
It's time to return the beloved glowing Apple logo to the back of the next-generation MacBook Pro. (via Cult of Mac - Your source for the latest Apple news, rumors, analysis, reviews, how-tos and deals.)02:09 pmiPhone 17e is coming soon with A19 and a $599 price tag
The iPhone 17e will be hitting store shelves soon, with the update to the iPhone 16e packing the same A19 chip as the iPhone 17.The iPhone 17e should look like the iPhone 16e.Apple is expected to bring out an update to the iPhone 16e in early 2026, replacing it with a new iPhone 17e model. That update could arrive very soon, if one report is correct.According to Bloomberg's "Power On: newsletter on Sunday, Mark Gurman writes that the launch is due "imminently." Gurman doesn't specify a specific date, but it could arrive within days or a few weeks. Rumor Score: 🤯 Likely Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums02:06 pmiPhone 17e ‘due imminently’ with three key upgrades, no price change: report
Apple’s next iPhone launch is expected to be one of its cheapest. With the new iPhone 17e, a follow up to last years first generation iPhone 16e – the company will add three important upgrades to the device, though one thing won’t be changing: the price. more…01:51 pmM5 Max Mac Studio & New Studio Display could finally arrive in the spring
Apple's Mac desktop lineup should get M5 variants and the Studio Display may finally get its long-awaited upgrade just after M5 Pro and Max MacBook Pros arrive. Here's what to expect, and when.Mac Studio and Studio Display could be updated soonApple Silicon has been on a fairly predictable near-annual update cycle, which means the Mac lineup gets updated at a similar cadence. While some chips are short-cycled, others take just a bit longer, which seems to be the case for the Mac Studio in 2026.According to the Power On newsletter from Mark Gurman, Apple will release the Mac Studio and Studio Display "not long after" the spring Mac updates. The Mac mini is also expected to get an update in 2026 as well. Rumor Score: 🤯 Likely Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums01:43 pmCheaper MacBook with iPhone chip still expected in early 2026
The often-rumored budget MacBook is still expected to arrive at some point in the first half of 2026, as Apple prepares to compete directly with Chromebooks.The MacBook should be cheaper than the MacBook Air at launchRumors have repeatedly insisted that Apple will bring out a MacBook with an iPhone chip running the show instead of an M-series chip. As more forecasts come in, it seems the rumor mill is more insistent than ever that it will launch this year.The latest volley, coming from Mark Gurman's "Power On" newsletter for Bloomberg on Sunday, the MacBook will be the centerpiece Mac launch for early 2026. Gurman doesn't offer much new about the model, recapping previous claims about it, but he also doesn't narrow down the timing to beyond the first six months of the year. Rumor Score: 🤯 Likely Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums01:25 pmiOS 26.4: Here’s when Apple will release the first beta
iOS 26.4 is set to be one of the most important updates ever for the iPhone, offering a suite of new Apple Intelligence and Siri features. A new report from Bloomberg today reveals Apple’s timeline for launching iOS 26.4. more…01:23 pmReport: M5 Pro and M5 Max MacBook Pro could launch ‘as early as’ March 2nd
There’s been loads of speculation as to when the next generation MacBook Pros with high-end Apple Silicon would launch. Many thought January, then January came and went. All we knew is that they’d launch alongside macOS 26.3 – which should go out to the public in the coming days. However, that only means that the MacBook Pros have to launch sometime before macOS 26.4 launches to the public. Despite the imminent launch of macOS 26.3, the MacBook Pro launch isn’t quite as imminent, per Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. more…12:12 pmCrime blotter: Teens arrested for stealing from Cambridge Apple Store
Jeffrey Epstein's Apple Watch gift, an actor followed his stolen iPhone to China, and two iPhone thefts in one day in Texas, all in this week's Apple Crime BlotterThe Grand Arcade Apple Store in CambridgeThe latest in an occasional AppleInsider feature, looking at the world of Apple-related crime. Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums11:35 am'The Studio' and 'Mr. Scorsese' honored at Directors' Guild Awards
Apple TV has picked up three more Directors' Guild awards, this time in the comedy and documentary categories, as well as outstanding advertising.Seth Rogen in 'The Studio' - Image Credit: Apple TVApple now has a strong track record in nominations for television series at the Directors' Guild Awards — "Ted Lasso" has had seven — but few wins. Notably, "Lessons in Chemistry" won in the drama series category in 2024, and Apple has had a children's award plus advertising ones.Now for the 78th Annual Directors' Guild Award, Apple has doubled its number of wins. In the ceremony in Beverley Hills on February 7, 2026, Apple won: Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums