Category: Apple

It’s a big day for Mac laptop buyers. Let’s start with the simplest of the updates, the MacBook Air:

M5 features a faster CPU and next-generation GPU with a Neural Accelerator in each core, enabling MacBook Air to power through a variety of workflows, from creative projects to complex AI tasks. MacBook Air now comes standard with double the starting storage at 512GB with faster SSD technology, and is configurable up to 4TB, so customers can keep their most important work on hand. Apple’s N1 wireless chip delivers Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 for seamless connectivity on the go.

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Apple’s week of news has begun. Up first is an updated iPad Air:

With a faster CPU and GPU, iPad Air boosts tasks like editing and gaming, and is a powerful device for AI with a faster Neural Engine, higher memory bandwidth, and 50 percent more unified system memory than the previous generation. With M4, iPad Air is up to 30 percent faster than iPad Air with M3, and up to 2.3x faster than iPad Air with M1. The new iPad Air also features the latest in Apple silicon connectivity chips, N1 and C1X, delivering fast wireless and cellular connections — and support for Wi-Fi 7 — that empower users to work and be creative anywhere. Available in two sizes and four gorgeous finishes that users love, the 11-inch iPad Air is super portable, and the 13-inch model provides an even larger display for those who want more space to multitask. With game-changing iPadOS 26 capabilities, advanced cameras, all-day battery life, a powerful app ecosystem, and support for accessories like Apple Pencil Pro and Magic Keyboard, iPad Air delivers a remarkable and versatile experience for anyone who wants to do more on iPad, from students and creators, to business users and gamers.

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Yesterday, Jason shared the results of his annual Apple report card. As per tradition, I’m now turning the answers I supplied Jason into a blog post.¹

Mac: 4/5

Five years into the Apple silicon era, Apple seems to be firing on all cylinders, with regular releases for most of its products (cough, cough, Mac Pro). The laptops run cool with amazing battery life, and there’s a desktop Mac for just about everyone.

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This morning, Apple announced that it will begin producing Mac minis in America starting later this year:

Apple today announced a significant expansion of factory operations in Houston, bringing the future production of Mac mini to the U.S. for the first time. The company will also expand advanced AI server manufacturing at the factory and provide hands-on training at its new Advanced Manufacturing Center beginning later this year. Altogether, Apple’s Houston operations will create thousands of jobs.

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It’s the most wonderful time of the year: grading time! Jason Snell:

It’s time for our annual look back on Apple’s performance during the past year, as seen through the eyes of writers, editors, developers, podcasters, and other people who spend an awful lot of time thinking about Apple. The whole idea here is to get a broad sense of sentiment—the “vibe in the room”—regarding the past year. (And by looking at previous survey results, we can even see how that sentiment has drifted over the course of an entire decade.)

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I am excited about the possibilities of a low-end MacBook powered by an A-series chip. I think the return of a fun consumer notebook would be good for Apple. There is one terrible disappointment in the most recent reporting about this machine, however. Here’s Mark Gurman:

Like all Macs, this machine — code-named J700 — will feature an aluminum chassis. It’s not plastic, despite the lower price point. To stick with this premium material, Apple developed a new manufacturing process that allows the shells to be forged more quickly. The technique is designed to be both faster and more cost-effective than the one used with Apple’s current laptops.

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Earlier today, Apple sent invites to some folks for an event “experience” on March 4, being held in New York, London, and Shanghai. This is in line with some other press events Apple has held over the last several years for smaller announcements that warrant a hands-on approach. As John Voorhees writes, these spring releases tend to be a bit smaller in nature:

With several products rumored to be getting updates in 2026, it’s hard to guess what’s planned, although in the past, Apple has launched or refreshed products like the iPhone 16e, iPads, and the MacBook Air around this time of year.

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Eric Berger at Ars:

On Wednesday night, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman revealed that the Crew-12 and Artemis II astronauts will be allowed to bring iPhones and other modern smartphones into orbit and beyond.

“NASA astronauts will soon fly with the latest smartphones, beginning with Crew-12 and Artemis II,” Isaacman wrote on X. “We are giving our crews the tools to capture special moments for their families and share inspiring images and video with the world.”

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John Gruber is still using macOS Sequoia, but he recently came across one feature of Tahoe worth upgrading for:

But now that we’ve been poking around at column view in the Tahoe Finder, Jeff Johnson has discovered another enticing new feature. On Mac OS 26, the Finder has a new view option (accessed via View → Show View Options) to automatically resize columns to fit the longest visible filename. See Johnson’s post for screenshots of the new option in practice.

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Back in the day, Apple had three suites of applications:

• iWork, which started with Keynote and Pages, then Numbers
• iLife, which included iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, GarageBand, and for a short time, iWeb.
• Final Cut Studio, which was home to Final Cut Pro, Motion, Soundtrack Pro, DVD Studio Pro, Color, Compressor, Cinema Tools, and Qmaster.

Apps like Aperture and Final Cut Express were also around for a while. Meanwhile, Logic and MainStage are just out there doing their own things. I don’t even know what’s going on with Freeform, as it’s updated with OS releases, not as a standalone app like the others.

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This week marks the 20th anniversary of the original MacBook Pro. In the spirit of this article, I’m going to review it as if I were blogging about Macs back in 2006. Just go with me here.

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My Laptop History

I have been a PowerBook G4 user since 2002, when my boss handed me a 1 GHz Titanium PowerBook to use for page layout, audio editing, and other media tasks at the non-profit where I spent time after school and on weekends.

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Jason Snell at Six Colors:

If many years-long rumors are true, 2026 will be the year when Apple’s long-gestating folding iPhone becomes a reality. But there are a lot of different approaches to folding phones out there, and there’s no guarantee that the folding iPhone you imagine is the one that Apple is imagining.

Leaks from Apple’s supply chain have begun to strongly suggest the shape and size of the product we’ll call, for lack of a better name, the iPhone Fold. And since it’s likely going to be nine months before anyone holds one of these things in their hands, this seems like as good a time as any to consider the story Apple is likely to tell when it’s selling this device.

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