Opinion pieces & commentary

Steve Jobs famously dismissed the idea of a touchscreen Mac back in 2010 when he said that it “gives great demo” but turns out to be “ergonomically terrible” in real-life use.

It was inevitable that eyebrows would be raised when the company did a U-turn on this by launching the first touchscreen Mac. But while I have no interest myself, I do think the company’s counterargument some 16 years later makes sense …

Apple yesterday officially launched what it describes as “the biggest update ever” to the iPad mini, featuring an OLED screen and a thinner, lighter design.

However, while there are a significant number of upgrades, internet commentators were very focused on the one thing Apple didn’t upgrade: that 60Hz display …

Apple marketing chief Greg Joswiak didn’t hold back when he described the most ambitious figures in the AI race as the “lunatic fringe” of Silicon Valley. The piece suggested that the iPhone maker is hoping to position itself as being on the right side of a growing AI backlash.

Given the pace of development, trying to predict the future of AI is a risky business, but I do think Apple is absolutely right about the dangers …

Estimated iPhone Duo delivery dates started slipping dramatically, literally within a minute of pre-orders opening on Friday. Even some of those who got in within the first few minutes got estimated shipping dates into January of next year.

That undeniably poses problems for Apple, but some have gone as far as calling it “a major mistake” to launch with such limited stock. Personally, I’d say it’s annoying for customers but more of a mixed blessing for Apple …

Apple Watch Series 12 has been a marvel of an upgrade, at least for me. I’ve written about it many times, and personally – I have found that the Apple Watch Series 12 is a competent replacement for the WHOOP. That said, in my past month testing it, there’s one WHOOP feature I’ve found myself missing.

The iPhone Duo starts at $1999 for the 256GB model and rises to an eye-watering $3199 for the 2TB version – but a “renewable” inner display layer may help buyers to justify spending so much money on a phone.

Apple has addressed the biggest problem experienced with folding phones to date via a surprisingly affordable option …

I think it’s sometimes easy for geeks to forget that we live in a tech bubble with our fellow geeks. Many of us here have been using smart home technology for more than a decade now, some even for many decades.

I’ve seen a lot of bemused comments on the Apple Home Collection, with people asking why anyone would want to pay significantly higher prices for devices which don’t seem to offer any added benefit. But I think this is absolutely a bubble effect …

The launch video Apple created to show off the long-awaited HomeView product couldn’t have been more different from its usual fare.

While just watching it gave me a feeling of anxiety, I suspect it perfectly encapsulates the one use-case for this device …

We’ve seen a number of examples of why giving Meta’s Muse app full disk access to your Mac is a very bad idea, and yet another major privacy issue has recently been discovered. It’s now been found that Muse analyzes your communication with everyone in your life on an hourly basis.

Apple is rightly concerned about the development, and in a blog post says that it will be introducing additional controls around the Full Disk Access feature that’s been enabling the problems …

One of the most famous and successful partnerships in the history of technology has been that of Steve Jobs and Jony Ive. When Tim Cook took over as CEO, he did not play the same role in working with Ive on hardware design – and that was the right decision.

John Ternus is apparently taking a much more Steve-like approach to working with Apple’s design lab, and I think that too is the right call …

Since the unveiling of iPhone Duo, the idea of all major interface navigation elements being accessible from your thumb has been really interesting. Apple re-invented the idea of smartphone navigation with the outer display on iPhone Duo, and now it feels quite wrong that every smartphone puts things at the top.

AirPods are one of Apple’s most interesting products. The demand for them was largely invented by the fact that the company removed the headphone jack 10 years ago, and now most of us carry this almost magical pair of earbuds that do so much more than just play audio. AirPods offer best-in-class noise cancellation, and also serve as a hearing aid. They get better and better almost every year.

Despite everything that AirPods do so well, I have one annoyance with them, and it’s particularly annoying because it could be such an easy software fix.

The ability of AI systems to act as agents, carrying out tasks on our behalf, is the single biggest development in the technology. This is the headline capability Siri AI introduces to Apple devices, and I’m inclined to trust the privacy and safety safeguards Apple has put into place.

But Siri AI isn’t the only agent you can give full access to your Apple devices, with Meta’s Muse app the latest example – and one tech writer’s experience really underlines why you absolutely don’t want to do this …

Last week, Bloomberg reported that Apple is working on a screenless fitness tracker, akin to a WHOOP or Fitbit Air. As someone who’s used the WHOOP for the past 6 months, I do think its a great concept, though there are a few things I’d like to see Apple do better.

With the new iPhone Duo, Apple is taking a little bit of a software gamble. All apps, in order to take advantage of the larger inner display of iPhone Duo, will need to be recompiled for iOS 27.0 at a minimum. To use the Duo’s unique new tab bar and other UI components, you’ll need iOS 27.1.

Of course, this means a lot of developers will have to rebuild to support the Duo. On the flip side, it also means Apple is taking a risk of many apps on iPhone Duo being stuck in black bars.

The first smart glasses were Google Glass, launched way back in 2014. The product failed for a number of reasons, but the biggest of these was privacy concerns around video recording capabilities, leading to users being labeled “glassholes.”

The same phenomenon now seems to have finally caught up with Meta Glasses, leading me to completely change my mind about the requirement for Apple Glasses to have video recording capabilities …

Apple this week unveiled its new iPhone lineup, including the first ever foldable iPhone – the iPhone Duo. While the Duo itself is a fantastic device, it does leave me wishing that Apple did better for the iPad.

If ever there was a head versus heart moment in terms of Apple tech, it was in yesterday’s unveiling of the new iPhones.

I already started the morning by wiping the drool from my desk after watching the iPhone Duo sections of yesterday’s keynote, but the true hero of yesterday’s show for me was the iPhone 18 Pro/Pro Max, thanks to the new camera features …

Wow. After Samsung had a seven-year head start on Apple in the foldables market, the company really had to live up to its ethos of waiting until it could do a far better job than everyone else, and boy did it deliver with the iPhone Duo!

It was abundantly clear that Apple had thought through every detail of what a foldable iPhone needed to be, and has taken advantage of every benefit the form factor has to offer …

It was widely expected that the first foldable iPhone set to be launched later today would be named the iPhone Ultra. However, a report yesterday said that the device will instead be called the iPhone Duo.

If accurate, it’s an interesting development as it might potentially point to the company reserving the Ultra suffix for a completely different future model …

There have long been reports and rumours about Apple working on a foldable clamshell device that is either an iPad, a Mac, one of each, or a hybrid of the two.

A recent report said that although this was once a priority for new CEO John Ternus, the project had been cancelled – but I don’t think that’s entirely accurate …