All systems glow! That’s the tagline Apple is using on its developer website to promote WWDC26, its annual developer conference that starts on Monday. At 10 Pacific / 1 Eastern, Apple is expected to provide the first public preview of iOS 27 and related operating systems for all of the other Apple devices. As Tyler Graham of CNet speculates, the “glow” likely refers to Siri’s glowing UI elements, and Siri is expected to get many new features in iOS 27, many of which will be powered by AI. As you prepare for the announcements, you can download a special wallpaper for your device, get free animated iMessage stickers by downloading the Apple Developer app, and even listen to a special Apple Music playlist. I’m very excited to learn what Apple will announce, and it is great that we only have to wait a few more days. And now, the news of note from the past week:

• Are you a legal professional who works with audio recordings of legal proceedings that use the ForTheRecord proprietary format .TRM files? I’m not, but if this means something to you, there is a new service called MatterScribe that can create transcripts of court proceedings, depositions, etc., in only minutes using AI. It also lets you listen to these audio files on an iPhone, which the developer says was not previously possible. Becuase I don’t have any experience working with these sorts of audio files, I cannot comment upon any of these details. Nevertheless, this struck me as something that might be useful to some iPhone J.D. readers, so I wanted to share the news.
• The MacRumors staff produced this roundup of everything that they expect Apple to announce at WWDC.
• Ian Carlos Campbell and Cherlynn Low of Engadget provide their WWDC predictions.
• Filipe Esposito of Macworld says that we shouldn’t expect to see new hardware announced at WWDC. I agree.
• Glenn Fleishman of Six Colors explains the different depth-effect features available for your photos in Apple’s Photos app.
• The Apple Watch Series 11 sells for $399, but you can occasionally find it for an all-time low price of $299, and that 25% discount is available right now at Amazon.
• Rei Padla of The Gadgeteer recommends hubs that work well with the iPad’s single USB-C port.
• Cirrus is a company that sells personal aircraft. The cost of the airplanes starts at around $1.1 million, with some models costing several million dollars, so I suspect that most potential customers wouldn’t bat an eye at the $3,500 starting price of an Apple Vision Pro. Thus, it makes sense for Cirrus to promote its products in an app designed for the Vision Pro, and the app that the company released this week is quite impressive. First, the app features a fantastic, seven-minute immersive video that shows what it is like to be in the cockpit of one of these beautiful planes as it flies over places like the Grand Canyon and Monument Valley. Second, the app features full-size models. You can walk around the planes or step into them, and the attention to detail is absolutely phenomenal. The quality is breathtaking. If you have access to an Apple Vision Pro, I encourage you to check out this free app.
• What are Apple’s future plans for the Apple Vision Pro? Malcolm Owen of AppleInsider reports on speculation by Mark Gurman of Bloomberg. He thinks that Apple has eyes on the glasses market. “This involves competing against glasses made by EssilorLuxottica SA, which produces Ray-Ban, Oakley, Persol, and other fashion glasses. There’s also Safilo Group who make Tommy Holfiger and Hugo Boss glasses, and Warby Parker.” Of course, Apple did something similar to the watch market when it introduced the Apple Watch in 2015. And I suppose the iPod and then the iPhone similarly disrupted the prior market for portable music—a market originally dominated by Sony with the Walkman in the 1980s.
• Marcus Mendes of 9to5Mac says that Widow’s Bay on Apple TV is its best new show in years. I’m not quite that much of a fan, but I do enjoy the show, and it is certainly unlike anything else that I’ve ever seen. Parts are hilarious, parts are pretty intense horror, and the acting is fantastic.
• Today, Apple TV debuts a new show: Cape Fear. As Benjamin Mayo of 9to5Mac notes, the new series was inspired by the 1991 movie, which was inspired by the 1962 movie.
• And finally, here is a new and funny video from Apple that celebrates the fact that the Safari web browser helps to block data trackers. By the way, consider watching this one with the closed captions turned on.

I’m currently on vacation at the beach, and a huge Wi-Fi outage where I am staying forced us to delay this week’s episode by 24 hours. Fortunately, we were able to record on Saturday and the episode is now posted. And as a bonus, if you watch the video version of this week’s podcast on YouTube, you can watch the sand and the waves behind me. We start by talking about some wishlist items for the upcoming WWDC, which is just over a week away. Then we talk about Pope Leo’s AI warnings, slim MagSafe batteries, using an iPhone instead of professional broadcast cameras, lots of tips, better prices when you sell back an item to Apple, a new badge for the Fitness app, and more.

In our In the Show segment, we talk about the Apple TV shows For All Mankind and Star City.

In our In the Know segment, Brett discusses the late great Sonny Rollins, and I share a tip for taking an iPhone selfie picture using the back camera—as long as you also have an Apple Watch.

Click here to listen to the audio podcast, or just listen using your podcast player of choice. You can also watch the episode on YouTube:

When I think about technology, I normally don’t think of the Pope. But Pope Leo is different. For example, he is the first Pope to wear an Apple Watch. So unsurprisingly, he thinks very carefully about technology. Earlier this week, the Pope released an encyclical letter addressing the societal implications of AI called Magnifica Humanitas. As Mia Sato of The Verge reports, the document notes some of the positive aspects of AI, but also warns about dehumanization. I’m increasingly using AI in my law practice because it allows me to create better documents when I work for my clients. But I agree that it needs to be used with caution. Not only do you need to watch out for hallucinations, but you need it to enhance your work product—not as a substitute for a lawyer’s careful analysis. And now, the news of note from the past week:

• With WWDC around the corner, many of us are thinking about our wishlist of announcements. Riley Hill of Slate Pad shares some interesting items from his iPad wishlist, including removing the app limit in Command-Tab on the iPad. Amen.
• Chance Miller of 9to5Mac reports that folks with an Arkansas driver’s license can now add their license to the Apple Wallet app.
• I love using Apple’s MagSafe Battery Pack, released in 2021, and it is a shame that Apple currently only sells a model for the iPhone Air. But third parties have worked to fill the void. Michael Burkhardt of 9to5Mac reviews the Belkin BoostCharge Slim, which looks to be a worthy competitor that adds one feature missing from Apple’s product: a kickstand.
• This past weekend, Apple filmed an MLS soccer game using only iPhones. As John Gruber of Daring Fireball notes, the quality was quite good. Impressive that the iPhone in your pocket is powerful enough to replace an expensive video camera.
• Ankur Thakur of iDownloadBlog shares 14 iPhone tips.
• Jason Cross of Macworld reports that Apple has increased the trade-in values for many devices, including iPhones, iPads, and Macs.
• Glenn Fleishman of Six Colors shares tips for typing emoji with your iPhone.
• As noted by Guille Lomener of the Spanish website AppleSefera, Apple redesigned its Passeig de Gràcia Apple Store in Barcelona, Spain. One feature of the renovated store is a dedicated area for picking up items ordered online. This makes a lot of sense. Whenever I go to my local Apple Store, I always see lots of people there to simply pick up items. And one of them is often me.
• Juli Clover of MacRumors reports that on Wednesday, June 3, 2026, you can earn a special Apple Watch Activity Award if you run a 5K.
• Fans of the fantastic Apple TV show For All Mankind have a big weekend. First, Apple is releasing the season finale of Season 5. Second, the spin-off show Star City debuts today. Ryan Christoffel of 9to5Mac notes that the early buzz for the show is good, although it does appear to be a darker show—perhaps unsurprising for a show set in the Soviet Union around 50 years ago.
• Matt Grobar of Deadline reports that a new comedy series from Mike Judge is coming to Apple TV. It stars Ben Stiller and will be called Protective Custody.
• And finally, last week, I mentioned some of Apple’s new accessibility announcements. One of them was the availability of new versions of the Hikawa Grip & Stand for iPhone: a $55 device that makes it easier for many people to hold an iPhone. Apple released a short and interesting video to show how this product was designed:

Happy Memorial Day, for those of you in the United States enjoying a three-day weekend. The next big event in the Apple world is WWDC, which is right around the corner on June 8—a date guessed by many of us, but Apple made it official this week. I look forward to learning about all of the cool software that Apple has been working on in its labs. But the Apple announcements have already started: Apple made numerous accessibility announcements this past week, and we discuss them in this week’s episode of the In the News podcast. We also discuss a deluge of tips, whether there will ever be an Apple Watch store for watch faces, cryptography and password security, a web browser for your Apple Watch, immersive Fútbol, and more.

In our Where Y’at? segment, we discuss a woman in the UK whose life was saved by the iPhone’s crash detection feature.

In our In the Know segment, Brett shares an interesting tip for determining how your iPhone’s camera captures audio when you use the Zoom feature, and I discuss using AI software to interrogate documents.

Click here to listen to the audio podcast, or just listen using your podcast player of choice. You can also watch the episode on YouTube:

Apple is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, and that number sounds about right to me. Five decades. But I was surprised to see that this week, Apple also celebrated a 25th anniversary. As Luke Dormehl of Cult of Mac reports, on May 19, 2001, the first Apple Store opened at Tysons Corner in Virginia. My brain still thinks of the Apple Stores as a somewhat new phenomenon. I still remember how pitiful it was shopping for Macs in stores that didn’t really care about Apple, like Best Buy and Sears. I love the new energy that Apple Stores brought to Apple. I just cannot believe that they have been around for half of Apple’s history. And now, the news of note from the past week:

• This time every year, Apple celebrates Global Accessibility Awareness Day by announcing new accessibility features that will be unveiled in the coming year. There are lots of interesting announcements this year. For example, if a video doesn’t already have subtitles, the iPhone will be able to generate and display them automatically. Wheelchair users will be able to use their eyes with a Vision Pro to drive around the wheelchair, something that will be useful for people with ALS. And larger text options are coming to tvOS.
• This time every year, Apple also announces the finalists for the Apple Design Award. As always, this year’s list contains a few apps I know about, and many, many more that are new to me.
• I’m really enjoying the David Pogue book Apple: The First 50 Years. Because that book focuses on Apple, it doesn’t address what Steve Jobs was doing after he was pushed out of Apple in the 1980s until he came back in the 1990s and saved the company. A new book by Geoffrey Cain tells that story: Steve Jobs In Exile: The Untold Story of NeXT and the Remaking of an American Visionary. Jason Snell of Six Colors reviews the book, and it sounds like an interesting read.
• Juli Clover of MacRumors shares 10 iPhone tips.
• That wasn’t enough? Tim Hardwick of MacRumors shares 15 Apple Watch tips.
• That wasn’t enough? Eric Griffith of PCMag shares 109 iPhone tips.
• David Sparks of MacSparky wishes that Apple would announce a watch face store for the Apple Watch—me too!—but acknowledges that at this point, it seems doubtful that Apple will ever do so.
• iPadOS 26 has been out for many months now, but I continue to be pleased with all the nice new features it includes. Andrew Orr of AppleInsider explains why iPadOS 26 lets the iPad get even closer to its full potential.
• I use 1Password as my password manager, and it stores my passwords in the cloud, so they are synced across my PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad, etc. But that doesn’t mean 1Password has access to my passwords on their server, and this article from 1Password does a good job of explaining why, by design, the company is incapable of looking at my passwords, even if they wanted to.
• Speaking of passwords, J.D. Biersdorfer of the New York Times explains what passkeys are and why you should use them.
• It doesn’t happen often, but every once in a while, I need to access a website, and my Apple Watch is the only device I have handy. μBrowser (pronounced “Micro Browser”) is a web browser for the Apple Watch, and it works. D. Griffin Jones of Cult of Mac explains how to use μBrowser.
• The crash detection feature of an iPhone saved the life of a woman in the UK when her car slid 330 feet down a mountainside, as reported by Oliver Haslam of AppleInsider.
• There is a new immersive video from Apple for the Vision Pro available today: Real Madrid: The Weight of Greatness, as noted by Jason Snell of Six Colors. I just watched it, and even though I’m not a soccer fan, I thought it was fantastic. While the focus is on the players, it gave me a new understanding of the passion of the fans because I felt like I was right there among them. If you are a fan of soccer, you will really love this. By the way, this Apple immersive video brings the total up to 47, and I keep track of all of the immersive videos on this page.
• John Gruber of Daring Fireball explains why he likes the Apple Sports app, Apple’s free app that provides real-time sports scores and stats.
• Gruber also notes that tomorrow, May 23, Apple TV will air a Major League Soccer game in which every single camera used for the broadcast will be an iPhone 17 Pro. That’s quite a flex.
• The new show on Apple TV this week is Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed. It’s a dark comedy crime thriller, and as Ryan Christoffel of 9to5Mac notes, the initial reviews are quite positive.
• And finally, here is a wonderful video of Steve Jobs introducing the world to the very first Apple Store in 2001. I’ve seen this video before, but it was a great walk down memory lane to watch it again.

Time flies. Five years ago, a friend of mine from Ohio asked if I might be interested in recording a podcast. I figured it might be fun to try it out, and five years later, the In the News podcast is one of the highlights of my week. Not only do I love talking to Brett Burney every Friday, but the feedback that we get from folks who listen to the podcast has been phenomenal. I have loved the last five years, and I’m excited about the next five.

In this week’s episode, Brett and I begin by looking at the topics that we discussed in our very first episode back in 2021. Next, we discuss the big changes in iOS 26.5, including encrypted text message communications with our “green bubble” friends who use Android and changes to the Maps app. We also discuss multi-modal weather forecasts, the Steve Jobs coin, Ted Lasso comes to life, and more.

In our In the Know segment, Brett shares his scary real-life experience with the fall detection feature of the Apple Watch, and I extol the virtues of apps that produce podcast transcripts.

Click here to listen to the audio podcast, or just listen using your podcast player of choice. You can also watch the episode on YouTube:

The iPhone was updated to iOS 26.5 this week. As noted by Jason Snell of Six Colors, one change was to support end-to-end encryption RCS for phones and carriers that support it. This means that if you are communicating with a “green bubble” friend and everything is configured correctly, your messages are encrypted, just as they always are with your “blue bubble” iPhone friends. This is nice, but as Wesley Hilliard of AppleInsider notes, it can be confusing to figure out whether your green bubble communications are encrypted or not. I think there are also some kinks to work out. This week, I tried to type a message on my iPad to someone on Android. In the past, that has always worked fine—my iPad passes the message to my iPhone, which then sends it via SMS or RCS. But after I upgraded this week, I got an alert that my messages didn’t go through. (They did go through when I re-typed them on my iPhone.) Almost all of my text messages are sent to people who use an iPhone, but there are exceptions. And now, the news of note from the past week:

• Ryan Christoffel of 9to5Mac notes that another change in iOS 26.5 is that when you use the Maps app and tap the search bar, you are shown two recommendations you might be interested in. At some point soon, the Maps app will start including ads, and perhaps they will go in the same section.
• Jason Snell of Six Colors reviews Indigo, a new app that works as a client for both Mastodon and Bluesky. You can have a single timeline for both services, and if something is posted on both, you see it only once (with an indication that it was cross-posted).
• David Sparks of MacSparky discusses the new CARROT Weather feature that provides multi-model forecasts so that you can see predictions from multiple weather models at once. I’ve used it a few times over the last few weeks, and it works well.
• New York attorney Niki Black recommends her top iPhone apps. The only one she recommends that I use is 1Password, but I use that one every day, throughout the day.
• If you had planned to purchase the new $1 coin from the U.S. Mint with a picture of Steve Jobs on it, it is too late. As noted by Ed Hardy of Cult of Mac, the coins sold out almost instantly.
• When I recently reviewed the Anker Prime Wireless Charging Station, I noted that it is excellent, and the only disadvantage compared to its competitors is the price. But right now, the device is selling for only $104.99 on Amazon, a big discount from the $149.99 MSRP. Highly recommended if you want an excellent 3-in-1 charger that is also portable.
• David Snow of Cult of Mac notes that Twelve South has made a new $29.99 device called PowerClip. It is a small battery (about the size of dental floss) that has built-in USB-C cords. You can clip it to something like a backpack, and you always have a 2,000mAh emergency power bank if you need it.
• A Wi-Fi router is typically something that you purchase once and then forget about for a long time. But Russia has not forgotten about them, and the FBI and NSA have announced that Russia has been hacking into TP-Link home and small-office routers since 2024. As Joe Supan of CNet reports, federal agencies recently obtained a court order allowing them to remotely reset thousands of routers without notifying owners, as a temporary fix. But these units remain vulnerable, so if you are still using one of the affected units, now is the time to unplug it and purchase a new one.
• Tim Hardwick of MacRumors reports that hackers have attacked Foxconn factories in the United States that produce products for Apple, and the ransomware group claims to have stolen confidential Apple project files. Yikes.
• Most of the chips that Apple uses in iPhones are produced by Foxconn in China. But Ryan Christoffel of 9to5Mac notes a new report that Apple is already starting to have some chips produced by Intel in the United States.
• If you have a newer iPhone and you need help in an area with no cell service, you can use satellite communications to text emergency services, request roadside assistance, message friends and family, and share your location. Oliver Haslam of AppleInsider reports that AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon have teamed up to allow you to do even more with satellites—but to be honest, the press release is pretty vague about what additional services will be available. Are they talking about voice calls? I guess we’ll see.
• David Snow of Cult of Mac reports that the Apple TV show The Studio is now the most-awarded new comedy in history.
• In today’s installment of life-imitates-art, the actor who plays soccer player Dani Rojas on Ted Lasso signed a contract to play professional soccer for the El Paso Locomotive FC, as reported by Ryan Christoffel of 9to5Mac.
• The new Apple TV show Margo’s Got Money Troubles is excellent. The season finale is next week, but Marcus Mendes of 9to5Mac reports that Apple has picked up the show for a second season.
• I don’t believe that this is a spoiler, but stop reading this bullet point now if you haven’t yet watched For All Mankind on Apple TV and you want to be extra cautious. In the alternative history depicted in this wonderful show, Apple developed the Newton, and it became a hit. Thus, in the current Season 5 (which takes place around 2012), the smartphones used by the characters are called Newtons, but they are similar to the iPhone, with features like swipe-to-unlock. Tom Pritchard of Tom’s Guide discusses the Newton models depicted in this show, noting: “For All Mankind’s Newton is eye-catching, and obviously an iPhone analogue to anyone who looks at it, but looking closer reveals a bunch of cool details that phone nerds like myself can appreciate.”
• And finally, here is a new video from Apple that shows college students using Macs to come up with great ideas. But even as someone whose college days are long past, the video speaks to me as well. Virtually every day, I find myself working through the best way to do something until I have that eureka moment when the path is clear. Perhaps the video will speak to you as well:

Apple released a new watch band this week—the 2026 version of the Pride watch band—so this was a good opportunity for Brett and me to have an extensive discussion of Apple Watch bands that Apple has released over the years, including the models that we recommend the most. Also, just before we started recording, Apple changed the way that educational discounts work, so we discussed that breaking news. We also discuss what people in Enterprise think about Apple products, different uses of the HomePod, iPhone theft, the Bloomberg article on casino-style apps, and much more.

In our In the Show segment, we discuss the shows that are coming to Apple TV this summer. There is a lot there!

In our In the Know segment, Brett discusses the Lego Game Boy, and I recommend the Bandbreite app (and website).

Click here to listen to the audio podcast, or just listen using your podcast player of choice. You can also watch the episode on YouTube:

It’s always sad when a TV show that you enjoy is cancelled too early. For me and many other fans of Sci-Fi, a good example of that was the show Firefly, which was cancelled in 2002 after only 11 episodes. Much more recently, I enjoyed the Apple TV show Schmigadoon!, which had two solid seasons full of very memorable musical numbers. A third season was written (including 25 new songs), but unfortunately, Apple pulled the plug on this unique show. However, the show was then turned into a Broadway musical, and as reported by Ryan Christoffel of 9to5Mac, it earned 12 Tony nominations this week, including Best Musical. Christoffel wonders if the success on Broadway might result in Apple creating a third season after all. I hope so. It also occurs to me that if the show does win a Tony, that will be the last award Apple needs to earn an EGOT. And now, the news of note from the past week:

• This week, John Gruber of Daring Fireball linked to a story written by David Gelphman back in 2013 called 2 Letters from Steve. It’s a great read.
• This time every year, Apple introduces a new version of its Pride Band for the Apple Watch. Joe Rossignol of MacRumors shows off this year’s version. I think the 2017 version is my all-time favorite because it not only symbolizes diversity, but it also reminds me of the Apple six-color logo.
• This time every year, Jason Snell of Six Colors posts a report card on the use of Apple products in enterprise, based on survey responses from about 100 people who use Apple products to get work done. I was part of the survey again this year, so I guess I’m about 1% responsible for this year’s report.
• Wesley Hilliard of AppleInsider does a good job explaining in depth how HomePods can be used throughout a home.
• Last week, I explained why I disagreed with the report by Juli Clover in MacRumors that Apple is giving up on the Vision Pro. This week, I saw a LinkedIn post by Brenton Henry—the CEO of Front Row, a company that streams concerts—that does a much better job than I did. Not only did he explain why this story is wrong, but he also put it in historical context, noting that it is an example of Mark Gurman’s repeated clickbait that MacRumors frequently reprints. As a fan of what the Vision Pro does today and someone who looks forward to future products in this line, I found myself nodding repeatedly as I read this.
• I’ve always had good experiences with Apple’s woven USB-C cables. Apple created colorful versions of those cables to go with the iMac, and you can now get those cables on Woot! for as little as $11 each.
• David Brown of The Times reports on the arrest of a man who stole 62,000 iPhones to ship them abroad. The report says that he may have been responsible for about 40% of all mobile phones stolen in London.
• Dan Moren of Six Colors recently traveled to London and, after his trip, wrote about how he used technology to enhance the experience.
• There is an interesting article by Peter Robison and Vernon Silver of Bloomberg about the incredible popularity of iPhone games that encourage you to spend in-app money for virtual coins. They note that these are essentially casinos, but because they don’t provide players with the opportunity to win real money, only the opportunity to play even more, they are not regulated. It is an $11 billion market, and Apple receives a significant percentage of those payments. The article raises valid points about how these games can seem addictive for some, but I also think that people have a right to spend their entertainment money as they wish, whether it is on games, music, comic books or other collectibles, etc.
• Ryan Christoffel of 9to5Mac reports on what is coming to Apple TV this summer: Cape Fear, Sugar (Season 2), Silo (Season 3), Trying (Season 5), Lucky, The Dink, Ted Lasso (Season 4), Women in Blue (Season 2), and Dark Matter (Season 2). Looks like I need to find some time to watch TV over the next few months.
• And finally, I’m not a fan of horror movies, so I never saw Martin Scorsese’s 1991 movie Cape Fear. But this week, Apple released the trailer for the TV version that premieres June 5 on Apple TV, and I have to admit that I am intrigued. It stars Javier Bardem, Amy Adams, and Patrick Wilson, and based on the trailer, it looks like it could be good—but definitely scary.

A few days ago, Apple released the results for its 2026 fiscal second quarter (which ran from December 28, 2025, to March 28, 2026) and held a call with analysts to discuss the results. Unlike Apple’s Q1, which contains all of the holiday sales, Apple’s Q2 is usually not a particularly interesting quarter. But this year was different: Apple saw revenue of over $100 billion in the quarter, the first time that has ever happened in any quarter besides a Q1. Those are impressive numbers, but as always, what interests me about these conference calls is not the revenue itself as much as what we learn about Apple’s products. If you want to get all of the nitty-gritty details, you can listen to the audio from the conference call on this page of Apple’s website, or you can read a transcript of the call prepared by Jason Snell of Six Colors. Apple’s official press release is here. Here are the items that stood out to me.

iPhone

• iPhone revenue for the quarter was just shy of $57 billion, up an astonishing 22% from this time last year. That is the all-time high for iPhone revenue in a Q2, easily beating the record of $51.3 billion in 2023 Q2.
• Cook said that Apple saw all of that revenue even though it couldn’t make iPhones fast enough. When asked if the constraint was the high price of memory right now, Cook said no; it is the limited supply of the advanced chips that Apple uses. Apparently, Apple should have ordered even more. However, Cook suggested that the current high cost of memory is going to have more impact on Apple in the future. It will be interesting to see if Apple is required to raise iPhone prices later this year.
• Cook mentioned that the current top-of-the-line iPhone—the iPhone 17 Pro Max—was used by astronauts during the Artemis II mission.

iPad

• iPad revenue for the quarter was $6.9 billion, up 8% from this time last year. (The all-time high iPad revenue in a Q2 was 2021 Q2, when revenue was $7.8 billion. The all-time high iPad revenue in any quarter was 2023 Q1, when revenue was $9.4 billion.)

Other

• Tim Cook has been attending these calls for well over 20 years, starting even before he was CEO. But in light of the fact that he has announced that he will be retiring as CEO later this year, he had the next CEO, John Ternus, join him for this call. It will be interesting to see in the future if Ternus participates in these calls every quarter, like Cook has done, or if he will only participate from time-to-time, like Steve Jobs did.
• One analyst asked Cook what advice he gave Ternus about being CEO. Cook responded that “one of the most important decisions he’ll make is where to spend his time. And I would spend it where the greatest benefit to the company and the users are, and never forget the north star for the company,” which is “making the best products in the world that really enrich other people’s lives.”
• So far, the AI that is built-in to Apple devices, which Apple calls Apple Intelligence, is limited in what it can do. But Cook said that what makes Apple Intelligence special is that it is “woven into the core of our platforms” and not a “standalone feature.” I mention this because I personally think that this is the future of AI: something that is just built-in to everything that we do. Apple is not yet as far along as I would like, but I like what they are trying to do, and apparently Cook does as well since he chose to emphasis this aspect of it.
• One might argue—especially in a quarter like this one—that the most impressive thing that Apple makes is money. Since 2018, Apple has pursued a net cash neutral position where it didn’t try to build up a pile of cash and instead would use it on investments and on buying up stock. But Apple CFO Kevan Parekh announced that Apple is no longer pursuing a net cash neutral position. Parekh didn’t clarify what that means other than saying that it gives Apple “flexibility while also being very efficient and disciplined,” but it seems obvious to me that it means that Apple is now going to stockpile some of its massive revenue so that it has lots of cash on hand the next time that it wants to make a big acquisition—such as buying an AI company. Apple may soon go on a bit of a buying spree. We’ll see.
• Apple’s services revenue continues to increase every quarter, and it is now up to a record $31 billion, which is 16% higher than this time last year.
• There are 2.5 billion Apple devices currently in active use around the world, an all-time record.
• Cook said that demand for the new Mac Neo has been “off the charts” with “higher than expected demand.” As a result, there is more demand than supply.
• Cook stated that Apple will apply for a tariff refund from the U.S. government, but he promised that Apple would use that money to invest in “U.S. innovation and advanced manufacturing.” And this carefully worded statement is a perfect example of why Cook is the right person to continue to deal with Trump and other world leaders, even after Ternus becomes CEO.