Today, the OS Class of 26 graduated to Public Beta, and Jason Snell and I are in lockstep in how we think about Tahoe:
After a month using early builds of macOS Tahoe full time, I can confidently report that this is an upgrade that feels like an upgrade. The additional power of Spotlight and Shortcuts is going to delight a lot of longtime Mac users, and I’m really liking the direction Apple is taking Control Center in the menu bar.
For just $19.99 per month, customers can protect up to three products in one plan, with the option to add more at any time for $5.99 per month for each device. With AppleCare One, customers receive one-stop service and support from Apple experts across all of the Apple products in their plan for simple, affordable peace of mind. Starting tomorrow, customers in the U.S. can sign up for AppleCare One directly on their iPhone, iPad, or Mac, or by visiting their nearest Apple Store.
Back in January, Apple disabled Apple Intelligence notification summaries for news app after a string of high-profile incidents of the feature rewriting headlines to be incorrect. With iOS Beta 4, the feature is back, as Chance Miller writes:
When you update to iOS 26 beta 4, you’ll see a new setup flow that allows you to choose to enable notification summaries for the “News & Entertainment” category of apps.
If you choose to enable summaries for News & Entertainment apps, you’ll see a warning in bright red text: “Summarization may change the meaning of original headlines. Verify information.” There is also an option to report concerns with notification summaries directly to Apple.
This morning, I pressed the little button on my Tacoma’s steering wheel to trigger Siri in CarPlay. I asked it to start a text to Myke Hurley. As you can imagine, this is something I do often when driving.
Instead of asking me what I wanted to say, Siri inquired about what app I wanted to use. The list of apps it offered was incredible.
Sadly, sending a message via the app for my studio’s mini-split system doesn’t work. All of this, and I’m not even running the beta of iOS 26 on my primary phone yet.
Michael Teo Van Runkle drove a Aston Martin DB12 Volante for a week for a blog post. As one does.
To recap, some leakers have already reported on the potential colors for some of the models in the iPhone 17 family. For instance, a leaker known as Majin Bu said that Apple had been experimenting with purple and green versions of the iPhone 17 base model. The leaker also claims that the rumored ultra-thin “iPhone 17 Air” model will be available in a light shade of blue.
Rafa Conde put together a cool little project and outlined it on Mastodon:
Today I decided to open up my Opal Tadpole webcam, because I was curious to see how they managed to make it so small… and to my surprise the camera was not installed directly to the board, but with a cable instead!
Apple today announced Jeff Williams will transition his role as chief operating officer later this month to Sabih Khan, Apple’s senior vice president of Operations as part of a long-planned succession. Williams will continue reporting to Apple CEO Tim Cook and overseeing Apple’s world class design team and Apple Watch alongside the company’s Health initiatives. Apple’s design team will then transition to reporting directly to Cook after Williams retires late in the year.
That brings the total to three “default” wallpapers for the new operating system. The newest is named “Tahoe Day” and is very similar to Apple’s other Aerial images.
Download full-sized copies of all three here:
The A18 Pro is 46% faster than the M1 in single-core tasks, and almost identical to the M1 on multi-core and graphics tasks. If you wanted to get rid of the M1 MacBook Air but have decided that even today, its performance characteristics make it perfectly suitable as a low-cost Mac laptop, building a new model on the A18 Pro would not be a bad move. It wouldn’t have Thunderbolt, only USB-C, but that’s not a dealbreaker on a cheap laptop. It might re-use parts from the M1 Air, including the display.
Ming-Chi Kuo is back with a new report, this time concerning a new MacBook Apple is apparently working on behind the scenes:
Expected to enter mass production in late 4Q25 or early 1Q26, with an approximately 13-inch display and powered by the A18 Pro processor. Potential casing colors include silver, blue, pink, and yellow
Apple aims to return total MacBook shipments to the COVID-19 peak of around 25 million units in 2026 (vs. an estimated 20 million units in 2025). The more-affordable MacBook is projected to account for 5–7 million units for 2026.
Tom Warren has the details:
The Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) has held strong in Windows for nearly 40 years, but that’s about to change. Microsoft revealed earlier this year that it was overhauling its BSOD error message in Windows 11, and the company has now confirmed that it will soon be known as the Black Screen of Death. The new design drops the traditional blue color, frowning face, and QR code in favor of a simplified black screen.
