Welcome to our weekly Apple Breakfast column, which includes all the Apple news you missed last week in a handy bite-sized roundup. We call it Apple Breakfast because we think it goes great with a Monday morning cup of coffee or tea, but it’s cool if you want to give it a read during lunch or dinner hours too.

The only way is upsell

One of the quirkier stories we covered last week centered on a simple Velcro strap.

Apple’s upcoming Vision Pro headset, you see, is rather heavy, and the company seems to have addressed possible issues with comfort by adding on an extra strap that goes over the top of the user’s head. But this strap is depicted nowhere in the press photos, and (according to the Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman) is likely to cost extra on top of the standard $3,499 price tag.

If you spend that sort of money on a product, you’d hope that comfort would be priced in. (And it’s entirely possible, we should stress, that it will be. For now this is merely a rumor.) But the idea that the strap won’t be included in the box is sadly compatible with Apple’s broader strategy in recent years. Apple has become the king of the upsell.

It all started, for me at least, with the charger. In 2020 Apple made the decision to stop including a power adapter with new iPhones, using the pretext that most customers already owned one, and that they were all ending up in landfill. Handy, then, that the move also enabled Apple to reduce the size of boxes and cut costs without lowering the price. And of course Apple will still happily sell you an adapter for an extra $19 if you haven’t got one lying around. The company also stopped including EarPods in iPhone boxes, which means more AirPods sales.

To be clear, I’m not saying the environmental justification was entirely disingenuous. But I do strongly suspect that Apple found a genuinely worthwhile idea more appealing because it could be used to squeeze out bigger profits. If the company sincerely wanted to reduce tech waste in landfill, after all, it would make its phones compatible with a global connection standard rather than a proprietary one before being forced to do so by regulatory pressure. But proprietary cables and chargers are better for upsell.

In 2022, Apple went all-out on the upsell strategy. It wasn’t enough for customers to spend $799 on a new iPhone 14; the company gave that device a year-old processor and generally did all it could to push customers who could possibly afford it to get the $999 14 Pro instead. (In our review, we called the 14 “basically an iPhone 13s.”) Similarly, the Apple Watch Series 8 was barely an improvement on its predecessor–why bother with the Series 8, when you’ve got the Apple Watch Ultra to push–and the AirPods Pro were heavily pushed over the standard AirPods. Every company wants you to buy their most expensive models, but for Apple that year it became an obvious and calculated strategy to an extent never seen before.

It’s difficult to argue with decisions made by a company that just touched a $3 trillion market cap (again). But this sort of thing–gouging out an extra $400 for wheels, when your customer has already shelled out $6,999 for a Mac Pro–might not be wise in the long term. It can get people’s backs up, eroding goodwill towards your brand, but more importantly, it makes your entry-level products seem a bit, well, rubbish. And those who can’t afford the iPhone 14 Pro or the Apple Watch Ultra or the Vision Strap Plus might decide to give up on the idea entirely and spend their money elsewhere.

Have your say

Thanks to the readers who got in touch about last week’s Siri-bashing column. I was reassured to discover that some of you are even angrier about the state of Apple’s error-prone personal assistant than I am.

Richard Raymond-Smith, for example, complained bitterly about Siri’s apparent regression. It used to be able to respond to natural-language queries about a journey’s ETA, he notes, but now unhelpfully replies along the lines of “Here’s what I found on the web about ETA…” That’s a big fail, Siri.

Robert Williams, meanwhile, finds it “mystifying that Apple continues to sully its reputation for excellent products by muddling along with a product that is VASTLY inferior to, say, Alexa,” and ponders why any of the company’s software engineers would willingly work on Siri, given the embarrassment factor when revealing this in conversation. And Gus Pistolis throws down a challenge: “How do we mount a grassroots effort to get Apple to create a better if not new Siri?” The campaign starts here!

Drop me an email if you’ve got any strong opinions about this week’s piece above; I can’t respond to them all, but I do read them. No promises, but I might include a few more reader comments next week.

Reviews corner

• Affinity Photo review: An affordable Photoshop alternative.
• Pixelmator Pro review: An affordable alternative for Photoshop pro users.

Trending: Top stories

Does anyone actually enjoy working at Apple, asks the Macalope.

Wallets out, everyone. A rare original 4GB iPhone is expected to fetch as much as $100K at auction.

Apple has bagged Stardew Valley in a notable coup for Apple Arcade.

The rumor mill

Apple is planning to launch its biggest iMac ever. It could have a screen beyond 30 inches.

But there might be a very long wait until the next new Mac arrives.

The next Apple Watch Ultra might arrive sooner than we thought.

You might have to pay extra to make the Vision Pro headset comfortable.

After a huge June, here’s everything coming from Apple in July.

And looking further into the future, here’s everything Apple plans to release over the next 12 months.

Podcast of the week

The Apple Watch is getting its first major revamp to its operating system this fall. And can FaceTime spur Apple TV hardware sales? Plus the fundamental change coming to all of Apple’s operating systems, all in this episode of the Macworld Podcast!

You can catch every episode of the Macworld Podcast on Spotify, Soundcloud, the Podcasts app, or our own site.

Software updates, bugs, and problems

iOS 17 is finally tapping into the iPhone 6’s full potential.

Visual Look Up is getting a lot more useful in iOS 17.

And with that, we’re done for this week’s Apple Breakfast. If you’d like to get regular roundups, sign up for our newsletters. You can also follow us on Twitter or on Facebook for discussion of breaking Apple news stories. See you next Monday, and stay Appley.

Apple Inc

The Apple Watch is getting its first major revamp to its operating system this fall. And can FaceTime spur Apple TV hardware sales? This, plus the fundamental change coming to all of Apple’s operating systems, all in this episode of the Macworld Podcast!

This is episode 847 with Jason Cross, Michael Simon, and Roman Loyola.

Listen to episode 847 on Apple Podcasts

Listen to episode 847 on Spotify

Get Info 

Click on the links below to learn more about what was discussed on the show. 

• Apple rethinks the Apple Watch with watchOS 10 update 
• You can now take FaceTime calls on your Apple TV 4K 
• How Apple’s upcoming widget revolution will change our screens forever 

Subscribe to the Macworld Podcast

You can subscribe to the Macworld Podcast—or leave us a review!—right here in the Podcasts app. The Macworld Podcast is also available on Spotify. Or you can point your favorite podcast-savvy RSS reader at: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/macworld

To find previous episodes, visit Macworld’s podcast page or our home on MegaPhone.

Apple TV, Apple Watch

Welcome to our weekly Apple Breakfast column, which includes all the Apple news you missed last week in a handy bite-sized roundup. We call it Apple Breakfast because we think it goes great with a Monday morning cup of coffee or tea, but it’s cool if you want to give it a read during lunch or dinner hours too.

Ask a Siri question

It’s been a few weeks now since the excitement of the WWDC 2023 keynote presentation, and the triumphs and disappointments have had a chance to sink in. There was plenty of the former, but several of the latter, and the one that continues to sting–particularly when I have an especially bad week with the feature in question–is the lack of reassurance about Siri.

Apple is surely aware that Siri is bad, and that it needs to be improved. But looking back through our coverage of WWDC, an event that’s all about software, I can find only two mentions of the ailing voice assistant. One is the news that it will soon intelligently handle multiple commands in succession without having to be asked properly each time; this is a welcome if belated addition, coming years after Alexa and Google Assistant gained the same capability. And the other relates to it losing one word from its trigger phrase, which strikes me as disastrous. As it stands, Siri is constantly nagging and bothering me when I don’t want it to turn on, just because it (wrongly) thinks it’s heard the words “Hey Siri.” When it’s listening out for just “Siri,” my life is going to be hell. Realistically, I’ll probably have to turn off that feature and access Siri with a button press as before. There’s progress for you.

Neither of the stage mentions, you’ll notice, made any reference to Siri’s accuracy. Which is… odd.

What I wanted to hear from Apple this June was reassurance that it understands that Siri needs work and that the company’s people are on it. Maybe it would be a lot to expect an admission of failure on such a public stage, but Federighi could have done one of his self-deprecating jokes, while slickly segueing into a hype job about the improvements coming down the pipe. I mean, what happened to Operation Bobcat, Craig?

I don’t understand why Siri isn’t Priority No. 1 at Apple Park right now. Because–and I must apologize to regular readers for harking back to a favorite complaint here–the voice assistant simply isn’t fit for purpose, and its deficiencies taint my experience with nearly every Apple device I own. That includes, as previously mentioned, the devices (such as the Apple Watch) on which I very rarely use Siri, because Siri won’t take a hint and pushes its way into my life anyway. But it’s particularly infuriating on the ones where I rely on Siri, which is to say the HomePods in the living room and kitchen, and the iPhone, hooked up to CarPlay when selecting songs on a drive.

Ask for a song that shares a name with the album it’s on, and Siri will assume you mean the album (which surely the statistics would argue against?) and blithely start playing that instead. Ask for a song that’s incredibly famous in the studio version, and Siri will inexplicably plump for an obscure live recording with unclear vocals. Ask for a song you play all the freaking time but this time say the name of the artist slightly less clearly than Siri likes, and it will guess a same-named song by someone else who you’ve never listened to in your life. As far as musical choices go, Siri is like that wedding DJ who patiently listens to your grandma’s request for Perry Como, then slams on the Andrew WK record he was going to play all along. It would be funny if it wasn’t so annoying.

Remember when Apple apologized for Maps? That was great! Taking responsibility is cool. Resolving to improve things is cool. Let’s all admit that Siri is a dog’s dinner, then we can get back to salivating over Vision Pro, and I can stop writing these articles. Otherwise, the beatings will continue until morale improves.

Trending: Top stories

The widgets revolution is coming to change your screens forever.

iOS 17 has a bunch of great features–that no one will ever use.

Apple Vision Pro will replace the Mac long before the iPhone.

Swiss fruit growers have expressed concern as Apple seeks trademark rights to actual apples.

Best Buy’s Apple Watch Ultra Upgrade+ plan offers a peek at Apple’s hardware sub.

Apple has killed off Apple Card financing for SIM-free iPhones.

The rumor mill

The iPhone 15 is getting a U2 chip to prepare for Vision Pro integration.

Sorry, iPhone SE fans. The new model probably won’t arrive until 2025… if at all.

An FCC filing suggests Apple is launching an AirPods Max competitor from Beats.

Podcast of the week

Apple revealed iOS 17 at WWDC, and it looks like it’s more than a maintenance release. We talk about the features of iOS 17 that caught our eye, in this episode of the Macworld Podcast.

You can catch every episode of the Macworld Podcast on Spotify, Soundcloud, the Podcasts app, or our own site.

Software updates, bugs, and problems

If you’re reading this on an Apple device, go update it right now.

New Maps, Calendar, and search integrations are coming to Chrome on iOS.

You can now home-repair your iPhone 14 and M2 MacBook.

And with that, we’re done for this week’s Apple Breakfast. If you’d like to get regular roundups, sign up for our newsletters. You can also follow us on Twitter or on Facebook for discussion of breaking Apple news stories. See you next Monday, and stay Appley.

Apple Inc

Apple revealed iOS 17 at WWDC, and it looks like it’s more than a maintenance release. We talk about the features of iOS 17 that caught our eye, in this episode of the Macworld Podcast.

This is episode 846 with Jason Cross, Michael Simon, and Roman Loyola.

Listen to episode 846 on Apple Podcasts

Listen to episode 846 on Spotify

Get info 

Click on the links below to learn more about what was discussed on the show. 

• iOS 17: These five new features make us eager to upgrade 
• A bunch of great iOS 17 features didn’t make the WWDC keynote 
• The best new iOS 17 feature is a toggle
• iOS 17 Developer Beta made available to all

How to subscribe to the Macworld Podcast

You can subscribe to the Macworld Podcast—or leave us a review!—right here in the Podcasts app. The Macworld Podcast is also available on Spotify. Or you can point your favorite podcast-savvy RSS reader at: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/macworld

To find previous episodes, visit Macworld’s podcast page or our home on MegaPhone.

iOS

Welcome to our weekly Apple Breakfast column, which includes all the Apple news you missed last week in a handy bite-sized roundup. We call it Apple Breakfast because we think it goes great with a Monday morning cup of coffee or tea, but it’s cool if you want to give it a read during lunch or dinner hours too.

The Air to the throne

Last week Macworld published its review of the 15-inch MacBook Air, and it’s fair to say that we’re fans. The new laptop drew praise for its big bright display and awesome battery life, and duly received a 4.5-star rating and an Editor’s Choice award. Consider it recommended, with our compliments to the chef.

But the funny thing about Apple’s erratic approach to Mac refreshes–new models appearing when the company feels like it rather than to any kind of identifiable schedule, and in dribs and drabs rather than updating the whole line at once–is that one good release can make the rest of the product line suddenly seem unappealing. Right now, in fact, all roads lead to the 15-inch MacBook Air.

Take the 13-inch MacBook Air, for example. Unlike its larger sibling, this model gets a choice of processors, with Apple currently selling both M1 and M2 configurations. You might find the M1 option appealing, given that it’s still a fast chip and will save you some money, but after a recent price cut, the starting price is only $100 less than the M2 model, and you’re getting an older design and slightly smaller screen with thicker bezels. (Apple refers to both as 13-inch laptops, but the M1 model is actually 13.3 inches, while the M2 is 13.6 inches. For that matter, the 15-inch Air has a screen that’s 15.3 inches. These are hard times for statistical pedants.) Is $100 enough of a saving to justify picking a laptop with 18 months less future-proofing? We’d say not.

So the M2 config is a better choice than the M1. But again, there’s a more expensive alternative that makes more sense. The 15-inch M2 Air starts at $1,299, and that extra $200 buys you a significantly bigger screen, a better processor with 10 GPU cores rather than 8, better battery life (an extra 92 minutes in our tests), a bigger trackpad, and a superior audio setup with an extra two speakers. Again–and maybe this is deliberate on Apple’s part, in a calculated incentive for upselling–the sensible choice is to spend a little more.

But then again, the MacBook Pro models also suffer in comparison with the newest Air. The 16-inch Pro is vastly more expensive; the 14-inch Pro is still a lot more expensive while offering a smaller screen, and the less said about the 13-inch Pro, the better.

All of this reminds me of the emotional rollercoaster that is the iPad range. In 2020 we reviewed the latest iPad Air and said it was “the best iPad for most people.” But over the course of the next 16 months, Apple cannibalized the Air’s market from various directions with excellent updates to the 10.2-inch iPad, the iPad mini, and the smaller iPad Pro. By the time 2022 rolled around, the Air had been relegated to the runt of the litter–before a new update made it the best choice once again. The whole process is exhausting, and confusing for customers who don’t know if a better alternative will shortly make their new device almost obsolete.

Apple seems wedded to its secretive and idiosyncratic release schedule, and it’s unlikely that we’ll see a more predictable system–new versions of every Mac in the spring, new versions of every iPhone and iPad in the fall, for example–in our lifetimes. But the company would do well to consider the advantages of such an approach. Customers would feel more secure in their choices, for one thing, and could make the best decision for their needs and budget. (Yes, of course, sales would tail off in the month or so before each update… but Apple could predict that, and build that into its logistical planning. The sales would still happen, just at a different time.) Mind you, it would be a nightmare for reviewers, so maybe we should forget the whole thing.

Reviews corner

• 15-inch MacBook Air review: The best is still the best, just bigger.
• Mac Studio (M2 Max) review: Re-filling the need for speed.
• Beats Studio Buds + review: Better than AirPods (but not AirPods Pro).

Trending: Top stories

Apple’s Vision Pro strategy is looking a lot like the iPod.

Apple’s Game Porting Toolkit is the first real step to fixing Mac gaming.

Dan Moren discusses three WWDC software announcements that hint at new Apple home gear.

The fake eyes have it: Apple’s Vision needs some refinement, reckons the Macalope.

The first M2 Ultra Mac Pro benchmarks are seriously impressive.

If you have an iPhone 8 or iPhone X, you should probably sell it now.

The first M2 Ultra Mac Pro benchmarks blow away the best Intel models.

Intel has responded to the Apple silicon Mac Pro with its own ‘Ultra’ chips.

A Huawei ‘Vision Pro’ trademark might block the sale of Apple’s new headset in China.

The new Mac Pro is labelled as “Product of Thailand,” and nobody is sure why.

The rumor mill

Apple is already testing a faster 15-inch MacBook Air with an M3 chip.

What does the MacBook Air’s price cut mean for the iPhone 15?

Podcast of the week

The Mac takes center stage on this week’s episode of the Macworld Podcast! We have a new 15-inch MacBook Air, a new Mac Studio, the unveiling of macOS Sonoma, and more!

You can catch every episode of the Macworld Podcast on Spotify, Soundcloud, the Podcasts app, or our own site.

Software updates, bugs, and problems

Apple’s new Mac Pro already has an issue with its expandable storage.

And with that, we’re done for this week’s Apple Breakfast. If you’d like to get regular roundups, sign up for our newsletters. You can also follow us on Twitter or on Facebook for discussion of breaking Apple news stories. See you next Monday, and stay Appley.

Apple

The Mac takes center stage on this week’s episode of the Macworld Podcast! We have a new 15-inch MacBook Air, a new Mac Studio, the unveiling of macOS Sonoma, and more!

This is episode 845 with Jason Cross, Michael Simon, and Roman Loyola.

Listen to episode 845 on Apple Podcasts

Listen to episode 845 on Spotify

Get Info 

Click on the links below to learn more about what was discussed on the show. 

• 15-inch MacBook Air review: Apple’s best laptop, but bigger 
• Mac Studio (M2 Max) review: Re-filling the need for speed 
• macOS 14 Sonoma brings desktop widgets, more private Private browsing to the Mac

Subscribe to the Macworld Podcast

You can subscribe to the Macworld Podcast—or leave us a review!—right here in the Podcasts app. The Macworld Podcast is also available on Spotify. Or you can point your favorite podcast-savvy RSS reader at: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/macworld

To find previous episodes, visit Macworld’s podcast page or our home on MegaPhone.

Mac, MacOS

Welcome to our weekly Apple Breakfast column, which includes all the Apple news you missed last week in a handy bite-sized roundup. We call it Apple Breakfast because we think it goes great with a Monday morning cup of coffee or tea, but it’s cool if you want to give it a read during lunch or dinner hours too.

The long wait

When Apple announced the first iPhone in 2007, there was a five-month wait before the product became available in stores. When the company unveiled the first Apple Watch in 2014, we had to wait seven months to see what the big deal was. But the Vision Pro headset, unveiled last week, is likely to be nine or even 10 months from launch based on a spring 2024 rollout, and there are no guarantees it’ll be ready by then. (Spare a thought, too, for those of us in the U.K. who don’t even know if our nation is in the second tier of countries who’ll get the headset later in 2024.) After the Lord Mayor’s show comes the long wait.

To a degree, this sort of thing is inevitable, as is hinted at by the similarly, albeit slightly less, lengthy lead times for those previous big launches. (Mind you, the first iPad turned things around in less than two months from its unveiling, so these things are all relative.) While an iterative upgrade can be manufactured in comparative secrecy and then revealed as a fait accompli, the regulatory hoop-jumping required for a brand-new product line means the secret is essentially impossible to keep under wraps. You have to either announce early and live with a wait or have the internet make your announcement for you.

There are cases, however, where an early announcement cannot be rationalized simply by reference to bureaucratic red tape. Apple’s doomed AirPower project, for example, was plainly unveiled too early–not merely at a point when distribution still had to be sorted out, but when the engineers hadn’t finished fixing the problems. Presumably, Apple felt pushed into an announcement before it was really ready, either because it needed a punchy product to demonstrate that it could still innovate, or as a political plan B in response to the EU’s meddling on charging standards. Either way, the decision was a poor one.

Vision Pro is a different matter, with several factors potentially contributing to an unusually early unveiling. One is Tim Cook’s personal stake in the project. Despite leading the company to unprecedented financial success, Apple’s MVP CEO is often damned with faint praise: just a logistical safe pair of hands, they say; no vision; no significant launches on his watch. (And that includes the actual watch, which is somehow thought of as a Jobs product even though he died three years before it came out.) With retirement in the cards at some point over the next few years, Cupertino’s affable boss is understood to be thinking about his legacy, which may be why he reportedly overruled the design team and demanded that the Vision Pro launch this year. Cook doesn’t want to wait for technology to catch up with the concept. He wants to get started now.

More broadly, Apple is impatient to get started on the next chapter of its story. The company has been coasting on the profits of its iPhone line for years and understandably wants to know what comes next. As does the industry as a whole, for that matter. Mixed reality is certainly one possible future, but it’s nothing like the sure thing that mobile felt like in the mid-2000s, or that personal computing must have felt like in the late 1970s. This could come off, but it could also go spectacularly wrong if the world decides that it doesn’t want to wear a computing device on its face.

Like a job seeker unable to get experience without being hired, and unable to be hired without experience, Apple is in a bit of a Catch-22 situation. The world, and the state of technological advancement, seem unready for the company’s vision of facial computing; batteries aren’t slim enough, screens aren’t cheap enough, and the general public is skeptical. But the best way to move those things forward is to get out there and make the case. With Apple visibly behind the concept, devs will start building apps, movie studios will start creating content, rival vendors will step up work on their own products and the rest of us can start getting our heads around the societal changes required to move en masse from the phone to the headset.

Vision Pro’s first generation is unlikely to sell many units, and Apple may look silly for jumping on the mixed-reality bandwagon this early. But sometimes you need to take a risk–and the potential rewards are huge.

Reviews corner

We won’t be able to post a review for a while, but we have spent an hour testing out the Vision Pro headset. And we didn’t want to leave.

Trending: Top stories

Vision Pro is a VR headset for people who hate VR headsets.

Jason Snell explains why the Mac, not Apple Vision Pro, was the real hero of WWDC.

Apple needs the M2 Ultra Mac Pro more than we do.

The new Apple silicon Mac Pro is both cheaper and more expensive.

Even Apple seems to hate the 13-inch MacBook Pro. It’s the forgotten laptop.

A crazy headset, but no world-killing AI? The buzzword Apple didn’t utter during the WWDC keynote speaks volumes.

And here’s everything you missed during the WWDC 2023 keynote.

Podcast of the week

Apple’s mixed reality headset is now official, and it is definitely something to behold. We talk about the Apple Vision Pro in this episode of the Macworld Podcast–what it is, the tech behind it, what it will cost, and why would you want one in the first place!

You can catch every episode of the Macworld Podcast on Spotify, Soundcloud, the Podcasts app, or our own site.

Software updates, bugs, and problems

These five new iOS 17 features make us eager to upgrade.

Meanwhile, a bunch of great iOS 17 features didn’t even make the WWDC keynote.

But the best new iOS 17 feature might be a neat toggle that automatically deletes one-time passwords.

macOS 14 Sonoma brings desktop widgets, more private Private browsing to the Mac.

Apple has rethought the Apple Watch with its watchOS 10 update.

iPadOS 17 brings a raft of new features in better-than-expected update.

AirPods noise cancellation is about to become a lot smarter.

And with that, we’re done for this week’s Apple Breakfast. If you’d like to get regular roundups, sign up for our newsletters. You can also follow us on Twitter or on Facebook for discussion of breaking Apple news stories. See you next Monday, and stay Appley.

Apple

Welcome to our weekly Apple Breakfast column, which includes all the Apple news you missed last week in a handy bite-sized roundup. We call it Apple Breakfast because we think it goes great with a Monday morning cup of coffee or tea, but it’s cool if you want to give it a read during lunch or dinner hours too.

The long wait

When Apple announced the first iPhone in 2007, there was a five-month wait before the product became available in stores. When the company unveiled the first Apple Watch in 2014, we had to wait seven months to see what the big deal was. But the Vision Pro headset, unveiled last week, is likely to be nine or even 10 months from launch based on a spring 2024 rollout, and there are no guarantees it’ll be ready by then. (Spare a thought, too, for those of us in the U.K. who don’t even know if our nation is in the second tier of countries who’ll get the headset later in 2024.) After the Lord Mayor’s show comes the long wait.

To a degree, this sort of thing is inevitable, as is hinted at by the similarly, albeit slightly less, lengthy lead times for those previous big launches. (Mind you, the first iPad turned things around in less than two months from its unveiling, so these things are all relative.) While an iterative upgrade can be manufactured in comparative secrecy and then revealed as a fait accompli, the regulatory hoop-jumping required for a brand-new product line means the secret is essentially impossible to keep under wraps. You have to either announce early and live with a wait or have the internet make your announcement for you.

There are cases, however, where an early announcement cannot be rationalized simply by reference to bureaucratic red tape. Apple’s doomed AirPower project, for example, was plainly unveiled too early–not merely at a point when distribution still had to be sorted out, but when the engineers hadn’t finished fixing the problems. Presumably, Apple felt pushed into an announcement before it was really ready, either because it needed a punchy product to demonstrate that it could still innovate, or as a political plan B in response to the EU’s meddling on charging standards. Either way, the decision was a poor one.

Vision Pro is a different matter, with several factors potentially contributing to an unusually early unveiling. One is Tim Cook’s personal stake in the project. Despite leading the company to unprecedented financial success, Apple’s MVP CEO is often damned with faint praise: just a logistical safe pair of hands, they say; no vision; no significant launches on his watch. (And that includes the actual watch, which is somehow thought of as a Jobs product even though he died three years before it came out.) With retirement in the cards at some point over the next few years, Cupertino’s affable boss is understood to be thinking about his legacy, which may be why he reportedly overruled the design team and demanded that the Vision Pro launch this year. Cook doesn’t want to wait for technology to catch up with the concept. He wants to get started now.

More broadly, Apple is impatient to get started on the next chapter of its story. The company has been coasting on the profits of its iPhone line for years and understandably wants to know what comes next. As does the industry as a whole, for that matter. Mixed reality is certainly one possible future, but it’s nothing like the sure thing that mobile felt like in the mid-2000s, or that personal computing must have felt like in the late 1970s. This could come off, but it could also go spectacularly wrong if the world decides that it doesn’t want to wear a computing device on its face.

Like a job seeker unable to get experience without being hired, and unable to be hired without experience, Apple is in a bit of a Catch-22 situation. The world, and the state of technological advancement, seem unready for the company’s vision of facial computing; batteries aren’t slim enough, screens aren’t cheap enough, and the general public is skeptical. But the best way to move those things forward is to get out there and make the case. With Apple visibly behind the concept, devs will start building apps, movie studios will start creating content, rival vendors will step up work on their own products and the rest of us can start getting our heads around the societal changes required to move en masse from the phone to the headset.

Vision Pro’s first generation is unlikely to sell many units, and Apple may look silly for jumping on the mixed-reality bandwagon this early. But sometimes you need to take a risk–and the potential rewards are huge.

Reviews corner

We won’t be able to post a review for a while, but we have spent an hour testing out the Vision Pro headset. And we didn’t want to leave.

Trending: Top stories

Vision Pro is a VR headset for people who hate VR headsets.

Jason Snell explains why the Mac, not Apple Vision Pro, was the real hero of WWDC.

Apple needs the M2 Ultra Mac Pro more than we do.

The new Apple silicon Mac Pro is both cheaper and more expensive.

Even Apple seems to hate the 13-inch MacBook Pro. It’s the forgotten laptop.

A crazy headset, but no world-killing AI? The buzzword Apple didn’t utter during the WWDC keynote speaks volumes.

And here’s everything you missed during the WWDC 2023 keynote.

Podcast of the week

Apple’s mixed reality headset is now official, and it is definitely something to behold. We talk about the Apple Vision Pro in this episode of the Macworld Podcast–what it is, the tech behind it, what it will cost, and why would you want one in the first place!

You can catch every episode of the Macworld Podcast on Spotify, Soundcloud, the Podcasts app, or our own site.

Software updates, bugs, and problems

These five new iOS 17 features make us eager to upgrade.

Meanwhile, a bunch of great iOS 17 features didn’t even make the WWDC keynote.

But the best new iOS 17 feature might be a neat toggle that automatically deletes one-time passwords.

macOS 14 Sonoma brings desktop widgets, more private Private browsing to the Mac.

Apple has rethought the Apple Watch with its watchOS 10 update.

iPadOS 17 brings a raft of new features in better-than-expected update.

AirPods noise cancellation is about to become a lot smarter.

And with that, we’re done for this week’s Apple Breakfast. If you’d like to get regular roundups, sign up for our newsletters. You can also follow us on Twitter or on Facebook for discussion of breaking Apple news stories. See you next Monday, and stay Appley.

Apple

Welcome to our weekly Apple Breakfast column, which includes all the Apple news you missed last week in a handy bite-sized roundup. We call it Apple Breakfast because we think it goes great with a Monday morning cup of coffee or tea, but it’s cool if you want to give it a read during lunch or dinner hours too.

The long wait

When Apple announced the first iPhone in 2007, there was a five-month wait before the product became available in stores. When the company unveiled the first Apple Watch in 2014, we had to wait seven months to see what the big deal was. But the Vision Pro headset, unveiled last week, is likely to be nine or even 10 months from launch based on a spring 2024 rollout, and there are no guarantees it’ll be ready by then. (Spare a thought, too, for those of us in the U.K. who don’t even know if our nation is in the second tier of countries who’ll get the headset later in 2024.) After the Lord Mayor’s show comes the long wait.

To a degree, this sort of thing is inevitable, as is hinted at by the similarly, albeit slightly less, lengthy lead times for those previous big launches. (Mind you, the first iPad turned things around in less than two months from its unveiling, so these things are all relative.) While an iterative upgrade can be manufactured in comparative secrecy and then revealed as a fait accompli, the regulatory hoop-jumping required for a brand-new product line means the secret is essentially impossible to keep under wraps. You have to either announce early and live with a wait or have the internet make your announcement for you.

There are cases, however, where an early announcement cannot be rationalized simply by reference to bureaucratic red tape. Apple’s doomed AirPower project, for example, was plainly unveiled too early–not merely at a point when distribution still had to be sorted out, but when the engineers hadn’t finished fixing the problems. Presumably, Apple felt pushed into an announcement before it was really ready, either because it needed a punchy product to demonstrate that it could still innovate, or as a political plan B in response to the EU’s meddling on charging standards. Either way, the decision was a poor one.

Vision Pro is a different matter, with several factors potentially contributing to an unusually early unveiling. One is Tim Cook’s personal stake in the project. Despite leading the company to unprecedented financial success, Apple’s MVP CEO is often damned with faint praise: just a logistical safe pair of hands, they say; no vision; no significant launches on his watch. (And that includes the actual watch, which is somehow thought of as a Jobs product even though he died three years before it came out.) With retirement in the cards at some point over the next few years, Cupertino’s affable boss is understood to be thinking about his legacy, which may be why he reportedly overruled the design team and demanded that the Vision Pro launch this year. Cook doesn’t want to wait for technology to catch up with the concept. He wants to get started now.

More broadly, Apple is impatient to get started on the next chapter of its story. The company has been coasting on the profits of its iPhone line for years and understandably wants to know what comes next. As does the industry as a whole, for that matter. Mixed reality is certainly one possible future, but it’s nothing like the sure thing that mobile felt like in the mid-2000s, or that personal computing must have felt like in the late 1970s. This could come off, but it could also go spectacularly wrong if the world decides that it doesn’t want to wear a computing device on its face.

Like a job seeker unable to get experience without being hired, and unable to be hired without experience, Apple is in a bit of a Catch-22 situation. The world, and the state of technological advancement, seem unready for the company’s vision of facial computing; batteries aren’t slim enough, screens aren’t cheap enough, and the general public is skeptical. But the best way to move those things forward is to get out there and make the case. With Apple visibly behind the concept, devs will start building apps, movie studios will start creating content, rival vendors will step up work on their own products and the rest of us can start getting our heads around the societal changes required to move en masse from the phone to the headset.

Vision Pro’s first generation is unlikely to sell many units, and Apple may look silly for jumping on the mixed-reality bandwagon this early. But sometimes you need to take a risk–and the potential rewards are huge.

Reviews corner

We won’t be able to post a review for a while, but we have spent an hour testing out the Vision Pro headset. And we didn’t want to leave.

Trending: Top stories

Vision Pro is a VR headset for people who hate VR headsets.

Jason Snell explains why the Mac, not Apple Vision Pro, was the real hero of WWDC.

Apple needs the M2 Ultra Mac Pro more than we do.

The new Apple silicon Mac Pro is both cheaper and more expensive.

Even Apple seems to hate the 13-inch MacBook Pro. It’s the forgotten laptop.

A crazy headset, but no world-killing AI? The buzzword Apple didn’t utter during the WWDC keynote speaks volumes.

And here’s everything you missed during the WWDC 2023 keynote.

Podcast of the week

Apple’s mixed reality headset is now official, and it is definitely something to behold. We talk about the Apple Vision Pro in this episode of the Macworld Podcast–what it is, the tech behind it, what it will cost, and why would you want one in the first place!

You can catch every episode of the Macworld Podcast on Spotify, Soundcloud, the Podcasts app, or our own site.

Software updates, bugs, and problems

These five new iOS 17 features make us eager to upgrade.

Meanwhile, a bunch of great iOS 17 features didn’t even make the WWDC keynote.

But the best new iOS 17 feature might be a neat toggle that automatically deletes one-time passwords.

macOS 14 Sonoma brings desktop widgets, more private Private browsing to the Mac.

Apple has rethought the Apple Watch with its watchOS 10 update.

iPadOS 17 brings a raft of new features in better-than-expected update.

AirPods noise cancellation is about to become a lot smarter.

And with that, we’re done for this week’s Apple Breakfast. If you’d like to get regular roundups, sign up for our newsletters. You can also follow us on Twitter or on Facebook for discussion of breaking Apple news stories. See you next Monday, and stay Appley.

Apple

Welcome to our weekly Apple Breakfast column, which includes all the Apple news you missed last week in a handy bite-sized roundup. We call it Apple Breakfast because we think it goes great with a Monday morning cup of coffee or tea, but it’s cool if you want to give it a read during lunch or dinner hours too.

The long wait

When Apple announced the first iPhone in 2007, there was a five-month wait before the product became available in stores. When the company unveiled the first Apple Watch in 2014, we had to wait seven months to see what the big deal was. But the Vision Pro headset, unveiled last week, is likely to be nine or even 10 months from launch based on a spring 2024 rollout, and there are no guarantees it’ll be ready by then. (Spare a thought, too, for those of us in the U.K. who don’t even know if our nation is in the second tier of countries who’ll get the headset later in 2024.) After the Lord Mayor’s show comes the long wait.

To a degree, this sort of thing is inevitable, as is hinted at by the similarly, albeit slightly less, lengthy lead times for those previous big launches. (Mind you, the first iPad turned things around in less than two months from its unveiling, so these things are all relative.) While an iterative upgrade can be manufactured in comparative secrecy and then revealed as a fait accompli, the regulatory hoop-jumping required for a brand-new product line means the secret is essentially impossible to keep under wraps. You have to either announce early and live with a wait or have the internet make your announcement for you.

There are cases, however, where an early announcement cannot be rationalized simply by reference to bureaucratic red tape. Apple’s doomed AirPower project, for example, was plainly unveiled too early–not merely at a point when distribution still had to be sorted out, but when the engineers hadn’t finished fixing the problems. Presumably, Apple felt pushed into an announcement before it was really ready, either because it needed a punchy product to demonstrate that it could still innovate, or as a political plan B in response to the EU’s meddling on charging standards. Either way, the decision was a poor one.

Vision Pro is a different matter, with several factors potentially contributing to an unusually early unveiling. One is Tim Cook’s personal stake in the project. Despite leading the company to unprecedented financial success, Apple’s MVP CEO is often damned with faint praise: just a logistical safe pair of hands, they say; no vision; no significant launches on his watch. (And that includes the actual watch, which is somehow thought of as a Jobs product even though he died three years before it came out.) With retirement in the cards at some point over the next few years, Cupertino’s affable boss is understood to be thinking about his legacy, which may be why he reportedly overruled the design team and demanded that the Vision Pro launch this year. Cook doesn’t want to wait for technology to catch up with the concept. He wants to get started now.

More broadly, Apple is impatient to get started on the next chapter of its story. The company has been coasting on the profits of its iPhone line for years and understandably wants to know what comes next. As does the industry as a whole, for that matter. Mixed reality is certainly one possible future, but it’s nothing like the sure thing that mobile felt like in the mid-2000s, or that personal computing must have felt like in the late 1970s. This could come off, but it could also go spectacularly wrong if the world decides that it doesn’t want to wear a computing device on its face.

Like a job seeker unable to get experience without being hired, and unable to be hired without experience, Apple is in a bit of a Catch-22 situation. The world, and the state of technological advancement, seem unready for the company’s vision of facial computing; batteries aren’t slim enough, screens aren’t cheap enough, and the general public is skeptical. But the best way to move those things forward is to get out there and make the case. With Apple visibly behind the concept, devs will start building apps, movie studios will start creating content, rival vendors will step up work on their own products and the rest of us can start getting our heads around the societal changes required to move en masse from the phone to the headset.

Vision Pro’s first generation is unlikely to sell many units, and Apple may look silly for jumping on the mixed-reality bandwagon this early. But sometimes you need to take a risk–and the potential rewards are huge.

Reviews corner

We won’t be able to post a review for a while, but we have spent an hour testing out the Vision Pro headset. And we didn’t want to leave.

Trending: Top stories

Vision Pro is a VR headset for people who hate VR headsets.

Jason Snell explains why the Mac, not Apple Vision Pro, was the real hero of WWDC.

Apple needs the M2 Ultra Mac Pro more than we do.

The new Apple silicon Mac Pro is both cheaper and more expensive.

Even Apple seems to hate the 13-inch MacBook Pro. It’s the forgotten laptop.

A crazy headset, but no world-killing AI? The buzzword Apple didn’t utter during the WWDC keynote speaks volumes.

And here’s everything you missed during the WWDC 2023 keynote.

Podcast of the week

Apple’s mixed reality headset is now official, and it is definitely something to behold. We talk about the Apple Vision Pro in this episode of the Macworld Podcast–what it is, the tech behind it, what it will cost, and why would you want one in the first place!

You can catch every episode of the Macworld Podcast on Spotify, Soundcloud, the Podcasts app, or our own site.

Software updates, bugs, and problems

These five new iOS 17 features make us eager to upgrade.

Meanwhile, a bunch of great iOS 17 features didn’t even make the WWDC keynote.

But the best new iOS 17 feature might be a neat toggle that automatically deletes one-time passwords.

macOS 14 Sonoma brings desktop widgets, more private Private browsing to the Mac.

Apple has rethought the Apple Watch with its watchOS 10 update.

iPadOS 17 brings a raft of new features in better-than-expected update.

AirPods noise cancellation is about to become a lot smarter.

And with that, we’re done for this week’s Apple Breakfast. If you’d like to get regular roundups, sign up for our newsletters. You can also follow us on Twitter or on Facebook for discussion of breaking Apple news stories. See you next Monday, and stay Appley.

Apple