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.