Apple has had seven CEOs since the company was founded in 1977, but I cannot help but think of Steve Jobs as the CEO of Apple. And yet, as Harley Charlton of MacRumors notes, August 1, 2025, was the 5,091st day that Tim Cook was the CEO of Apple—surpassing the 5,090 days that Steve Jobs was Apple’s CEO from 1997 to 2011. (At first, Steve Jobs was the interim CEO, but as reported by Michael Kanellos of CNet on January 5, 2000, Steve Jobs announced during his keynote address at the Macworld 2000 San Francisco convention that he was becoming the permanent CEO.) By almost any metric, Cook has done an amazing job as Apple’s CEO since 2011. At 64 years old, I’m curious how much longer he will want the difficult job. William Gallagher of AppleInsider recently speculated on who might replace Cook as CEO one day. I feel certain that it will be someone who is working at Apple right now. And now, the news of note from the past week:
- When will Apple reveal the 2025 version of the iPhone? As noted by Tim Hardwick of MacRumors, there were rumors this week that the announcement will be on September 9. But regular readers of iPhone J.D. already knew that. As I noted a full year ago, Apple has been mostly following a pattern for a while now, and based on that pattern, I predicted that new iPhones would be introduced on the same date—September 9—in 2024, 2025, and 2026. Suffice it to say that if you are in the market for a new iPhone right now, I recommend that you wait another month.
- If you are a lawyer, then you probably know how useful it was when Westlaw added the ability to locate jurisprudence using a natural language search. Ryan Christoffel of 9to5Mac reports that Apple is doing something similar in the Maps app in iOS 26. Just use your own words to tell the Maps app what you are looking for—such as “find cafes with free Wi-Fi”—and the app will use AI to understand what you are looking for and give you search results.
- I have good news for what I’m sure is the very large number of iPhone J.D. readers who drive a Lotus car—or more specifically, the electric Eletre and Emeya models. Zac Hall of 9to5Mac reports that the British sports car maker is bringing Spatial Audio support to CarPlay so that drivers can enjoy immersive 3D sound in Dolby Atmos from the 23 speakers.
- No matter what kind of car you drive, if you have CarPlay, one of the improvements coming in iOS 26 is that phone call notifications won’t take over your entire screen. As Ryan Christoffel of 9to5Mac shows, this means that a call notification won’t get in the way of your navigation.
- Ankur Thakur of iDownloadBlog describes the new Wrist Flick gesture coming to newer models of the Apple Watch in watchOS 26.
- Simon Jary of Macworld reviews the Belkin BoostCharge Pro Magnetic Power Bank Qi2, a device that is the spiritual successor to the excellent MagSafe Battery Pack from Apple that I discussed in 2023 but which, unfortunately, Apple no longer sells. The Belkin device costs $59.95 on Amazon.
- You can currently get the latest model of the iPad mini for only $399 on Amazon, which is a $100 savings.
- If you go to iPhoneJD.com/appleimmersive, I keep an updated page listing all of the immersive video content from Apple for the Apple Vision Pro. It has been quite a few weeks since Apple released new content. On May 30, 2025, Apple released Bono: Stories of Surrender, and on June 19, 2025, Apple released a short video associated with the F1 movie. Today, Apple is releasing a new episode of its immersive series Wild Life. The new episode is called “Orangutans,” and Apple’s description is: Bond with young orangutans at an extraordinary rehab center in Borneo as they grow, play, and learn the ropes of jungle life. I watched this video just a few minutes before publishing this post, and it is incredible, one of my favorites of all of Apple’s immersive videos. Primarily, this is because of the subject matter. I enjoy watching the orangutans at a zoo because they are often funny and cute. That is true in this video, and it is even better because they are right there in front of you. Additionally, there is some incredible photography in this immersive video that does a fantastic job of showing the height of the trees that the orangutans climb on the island of Borneo in Southeast Asia.
- Summer is soon coming to a close. My daughter starts school as a high school senior in just a few days, and I know that many students have already started school. As we look forward to the Fall, that also means a new season full of good shows to watch. Ryan Christoffel of 9to5Mac runs down the shows coming to Apple TV+ this September, October, and November, and there is a lot to look forward to. I’m especially excited to see the new season of Slow Horses on September 24 and the new show Pluribus on November 7.
- What’s good on Apple TV+ right now? I’m loving the current season of Foundation. The new show starring Jason Momoa called Chief of War started last weekend, and I thought that the first two episodes were great. And the second season of Platonic has just started, a show that had a funny first season. Alexis Soloski of The New York Times interviews Francesca Delbanco and Nicholas Stoller, the husband-and-wife team that created the show.
- If you didn’t get a chance to see Apple’s F1 movie when it was in an IMAX theater earlier this Summer, you now have another chance. As noted by Apple, starting today, you can once again see F1 in an IMAX movie theater. As I noted last month in my review, the movie is great fun to watch on an IMAX screen.
- Speaking of the movie F1, not only has it been a hit for Apple, with revenue of over $552 million, but Caitlin Huston of The Hollywood Reporter says that The Formula One Group (the group responsible for the promotion of F1 racing) has seen a big boost in revenue as a result of the popularity of the F1 movie.
- And finally, stop reading if you haven’t watched the Apple TV+ show Severance yet. But if you have, one of the coolest scenes from Season 2 involves the character Mark and a video camera. Apple just released a clip on YouTube of part of that scene, and it is fun to watch again: